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Christian Pedagogy

OR,

THE INSTRUCTION AND MORAL
TRAINING OF YOUTH

BY
REV. P. A. HALPIN

PROFESSOR OF MENTAL PHILOSOPHY, ST. ANGELA'S COLLEGE,
NEW ROCHELLE, N. Y.

EX LIBRIS
SL BASIL'S SGHOLASTICATE

wo,Ml..„4:..^„.a4i^

JOSEPH F. WAGNER
1909

REMIGIUS LAFORT, S. T L.

Censor Librerum

Jmprimalur

*JOHN M. FARLEY, D. D.

Archbishop of New York

New York, July 23, 1909

Copyright, 1909, by Joseph F. Wagneh, k^t/s Yor^

CONTENTS

PART I. CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Pedagogy 1

II. The Scientific Value of Pedagogy 7

III. Christian Pedagogy 13

IV. Practical Work of Christian Pedagogy .... 20
V. The Subject of Pedagogy: Youth 24

VI. Home Education 30

VII. The School ........... 36

VIII. The Human Soul 41

IX. The Human Body 46

X. The Senses * . 51

XI. The Brain and the Imagination 56

XII. The Brain and the Imagination (Continued) ... 61

XIII. The Mental Operations ....... 66

XIV. The Will 71

XV. The Memory 76

XVI. Truth 81

XVII. Obedience 86

XVIII. Honor 91

XIX. Self Respect , .... 96

XX. Law 101

XXI. Reward and Punishment 106

XXII. Manners Ill

XXIII. Conceit 116

XXIV. Respect for Others 121

XXV. Degeneracy — Heredity . 125

ill

iv CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XXVI. Taste 129

XXVII. Country 133

XXVIII. Religious Influenci . . 137

PART II. CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY APPLIED

I. The Matter of Education 141

II. The Children 145

III. Method 149

IV. Personalities and Conditions 153

V. Temperament 168

VI. Memorizing 163

VII. Dangers 168

VIII. Qualifications of Instructors 173

IX. Justice 177

X. Cooperation 181

XI. Success 186

XII. Preparation for Religious Instruction .... 190

XIII. Bible History 194

XIV. Catechism 198

XV. Liturgy 202

XVI. Church History 207

XVII, Public Prayer and Congregational Singing . . . 212

XVIII. Attention 217

XIX. The Perfect Teacher 221

XX. The Perfect School 226

INTRODUCTION

^TpHE only excuse for a book of this kind is, that it may be a
help toward keeping to the fore the old-time saving prin-
ciples of all education and toward strengthening the legitimate
protest against all dangerous encroachment, a protest that should
grow louder and more general in these days, when enlightened de-
fenders of these principles are not as numerous nor as well-equipped
as they should be in this fight which is so furiously raging around
the foundations of civilization.

It may seem exaggeration to identify pedagogy with the security
of the home and the State. But what the mind is imbued with,
sooner or later is translated into action. As a man's mind thinks so
does his hand act. Everything that has transpired in all past ages, -^
everything, no matter what its nature, is traceable to some thought )
that dominated the individual, or the republic, or the empire. In J
fact, without such a thought there would have been no history, and
lethargy and monotony would have characterized all human ac-
tivity in all the years since the beginning of the race.

It is a dangerous thing for man, collectively or individually, to
consider views, opinions, maxims — call them what we will — as of
no importance in the shaping of a destiny, whether it be that of a
prince or a peasant, a hireling or a master, a pupil or a teacher. To
the teacher belongs the task of sowing the first seeds of thought.
We are not forgetting the home as a factor in the process. The
following pages more than once emphasize the high place the
family rightfully possesses in the upbringing of the child. The
training imparted by parents is completed by the pedagogue.

VI

INTRODUCTION

It might be supposed that because the family contributes, or may
contribute, so much to the moral fashioning of the child the teacher,
instructor or professor, should be allowed to settle down to his
work untrammelled by any obligation to guard the mind committed
to him against the principles which made up in so large a way the
intellectual glory of the nineteenth century and still continue for
so many to be the hall-mark of mental supremacy. It is precisely
against this that educators are aroused, and it is precisely because of
this that there is such an insistent clamor that the old landmarks
should be set up again where they have fallen, and brushed clear
of the dust which has not only concealed them, but has also be-
fogged the vision of so many men good at heart, but too short-
sighted to see that innovation is not always the path of true culture.
The family is safe in this generation or in that, but what about the
home when it is made up of the men and women whose education
inculcates views which antagonize all the wholesome truths which
made the man a man indeed, the woman a heroine and their chil-
dren agents in the light and fragrance of memories their ancestry
bequeathed.

There is an ever-abiding temptation by which many are misled —
it lies in the thought that nowhere are things as bad as they are
painted, that preachers overstate that there is no danger whatever
that the world would be much happier if all this agitation ceased,
and that it is a pity that bishops and priests do not look with com-
placent eye upon the stream of passing events and imitate the bland
imperturbability of those whose road of life is beyond the pale
of the Catholic Church. This statement has been made and made
frequently. That it does not speak very favorably for the fervency
of faith of those who make it goes without saying. It certainly does
not betray any intellectual brilliancy. Every clause in the utterance

INTRODUCTION vii

is baseless. Things are so bad that they can not be painted! The
danger to the future of all which life is worth living for, is so great
that hope for the days to come loses now and then its buoyancy.
It is not true that our bishops and priests are the only ones who
raise a cry of alarm. In all denominations there is a feeling of
anxiety and unrest, and from all sources, from statesmen and busi-
ness men as well as churchmen, there come admonitions and fore-
bodings which argue that there is something very rotten in peda-
gogy as here and there and in many places it is administered to-day.
Not very long ago there was an appalling disclosure made in one
of the magazines of the metropolis. In the Cosmopolitan of May,
1909, there appeared an article, entitled "Blasting at the Rock of
Ages," by Harold Bolce. The editor's note at the head of the
paper is emphatic. It will repay quotation : "This is the first of a
series of three articles by Mr. Bolce who has now completed a study
of American colleges extending over two years. What Mr. Bolce
sets down here is of the most astounding character. Out of the
curricula of American colleges a dynamic movement is upheaving}
ancient foundations and promising a way for revolutionary thought J
and life. Those who are not in close touch with the great colleges
of the country will be astonished to learn the creeds being fostered
by the faculties of our great universities. In hundreds of class-
/. rooms it is being taught daily that the decalogue is no more sacred
■?■- than a syllabus; that the home as an institution is doomed; that
3, 4J there are no absolute evils ; that immorality is simply an act in con-
travention of society's accepted standards . . . ; that the change
*r from one religion to another is like getting a new^at ; that moral
^ '/precepts are passing shibboleths; that conceptions of right and
wrong are as unstable as styles of dress ; that wide stairways are
' ' open between social levels, but that to the climber children are

viii ' INTRODUCTION

incumbrances, that the sole effect of prolificness is to fill tiny graves ;
and that there can be, and are, holier alliances without the marriage
bond than within it. . . . It is time that the public realized
what is being taught to the youth of this country. The social
question of to-day,' said Disraeli, 'is only a zephyr which rustles the
leaves, but will soon become a hurricane.' "

The warning of the editor's note is nothing but the statement of
the existing condition of things ! Nobody will deny its gravity. In
the face of it there is only one course open, and that the orthodox
one which is disclosed in the principle, rather, fact — that no educa-
tion can be anything but a menace to home and country which is
divorced from religious training. A very simple phase, but its
truth is as evident as it is summary.

The chapters contained within these covers defend and state and
restate this maxim. In the following pages there is nothing origi-
nal, or, if there be any originality, it is in the absence of everything
that is new. Perhaps this is greater praise than it seems. It is not
so easy always to withstand the onward rush which is plunging so
wildly in the direction of novelty. Epithets not in the least flat-
tering may be hurled at one, but the satisfaction which comes from
doing the right as one sees it and as so many generations of men
have seen it, brings compensation sufficient. He who lifts the
danger signal when danger threatens and helps to prevent colli-
sion and wreck is certainly doing no ignoble work.

A variety of subjects has been presented in this volume. They
were each and all considered to be correlated with the momentous
theme of education. They are treated with no great depth. It is
intended to give of each subject as clear a notion as possible, and
the difficulties they offer to the teacher are pointed out and the
dangers of misconception and how they may be distorted by false

mTRODUCTION ix

principles of morality are invariably signalized. It is chiefly in
connection with Catechetics that they are investigated. Repetition
is not always avoidable nor is always repellant. Here it simply
gives more resonance as well as clearness to the note which had to
be struck.

Catechetics always was a science. It proceeds from well-known
principles to conclusions which are irrefutable. Not only is
Catechetics a scientific pursuit, but it is the foundation of all
genuine pedagogy. Whatever may be the other objects of mental
investigation, Catechetics must never be dissociated from education.
It will be simple with beginners and will grow with the minds of the
learners. Only questions and answers indelibly memorized in the
lower forms, it will take on ampler proportions as the scholars ad-
vance. The Catechism of perseverance is only a fuller presenta-
tion of the smaller, the smallest text-book. Its crowning statue is
reached in apologetics : a science which is gradually assuming its
rightful place in the curricula of Catholic colleges. It is to he\
deplored that while Catechetics in its earliest shape is largely made^
up of question and answer, the same minute method even when in|
the higher classes it is explained as apologetics is not adhered to.^
The mere lecture may educate, but only to a degree, and, when the
indolence of youth is considered, the degree is measurably limited.
There exists for every branch of study no method more truly peda-
gogical than the method wherewith, by question and answer, the
teacher probes the knowledge and industry of his pupil. This
method ensures accuracy, and without accuracy there is no learning,
no education worthy of the name.

The large field opened to the student in apologetics makes it a
subject as interesting as it is instructive. It molds and applies
everything that he holds treasured up in the storehouse of his

X INTRODUCTION

mind. In it his logic and metaphysics assume a meaning which
makes evident how incomplete all culture is without the old-time
pursuit of mental philosophy in its correlated branches of ontology,
cosmology, psychology, natural theology and ethics. What manner
of mental science is imparted outside of the institutions which do
not adhere to the common-sense system originated by a pagan, and
strengthened and purified by the gigantic efforts of Catholic scholars
since the first ages of the Church !

It is slowly but surely being found that scholasticism is the re-
pository of the only saving principles in scientific knowledge,
whether speculative or practical. That these maxims are not uni-
versally adopted is because they are not known. There has been a
ban placed upon the system since time immemorial. It has been con-
sidered medieval in the most objectionable sense of the term. No
study worthy of the name, no real study which puts forward any
claim to being solidly learned, can afford to ignore it. For centuries
it held sway and inspired some of the finest outpourings of meta-
physics and theology. It has never been out of date or merited
scientific repudiation. This is not said so much to bepraise the old
schoolmen or the new, but the relegation of the wonderful produc-
tions of still more wonderful minds, while it can not adorn a tale,
still points to a fact, which recurs so frequently in the history of
education. True scientific research takes a longer time to confer its
benefits on mankind than the vagaries of sciolism or superficiality
take to become the cherished possession of the masses. Once false
principles or theories grasp the popular mind they take years and
years to loosen their clutch, no matter how victoriously they may
have been antagonized in the circles of the learned.

Early in the fifties there were spread broadcast views, on matters
essential. They were hailed by the half-educated and the un-

INTRODUCTION xi

educated with the loudest acclamations. Not only were they hailed,
but they were kneaded into the very tissue of men's brains. These
systems are discredited now, but have the people flung them out of
their thoughts? No! They are as deeply embedded to-day as they
were ever. This is lamentable, and the more lamentable that it is
not only false and pernicious learning which is being administered,
but dangerous standards are being uplifted on which is emblazoned
everything that makes for revolution and anarchy in every depart-
ment of intelligence.

Imperfect scholarship and too hasty generalizations are eagerly
accepted by the multitude, and they become formulas which regulate
the parent as well as the child in the selection of schools and
teachers. Novelty in instruction and laxness in discipline are the
two magnets which draw to-day. Catchwords or phrases are the
order of the time, and the scheme of most advertising. Anything
that is antagonistic of the old order becomes an attraction.

Let a professor of Chicago University declare that "there can
be, and are, holier alliances without the marriage bond than within
it" ; let a professor of Syracuse University state that "it is unscien-
tific and absurd to imagine that God ever turned stone-mason and
chiseled commandments on a rock; or one of Columbia University
say that "it is not right to set up a technical legal relationship
. as morally superior to the spontaneous preference of a
man and a woman" ; or a Yale professor affirm that ethical notions
are "mere figments of speculation and unrealities that ought to be
discarded altogether," and immediately the report goes abroad that
these colleges or universities are the only places in which learning
survives, and that they should be made the Meccas of all the
young who are thirsting for the undefiled springs of truth.

It is hardly worth while growing indignant at such a state of

xii INTRODUCTION

affairs. That such is the state of affairs is beyond doubt. When
one reflects on the use such principles may be put to in practice by
the growing generations, one shudders at what must be the condi-
tion of many Hves, and one is afraid to look ahead at the frightful
possibilities of future years.

Verily after such learning the deluge.

There is one consoling thought — the old, old thought that God is
in His heaven and with His Church. It seems an anti-climax to
add that within the covers of the smallest Catechism there are the
germs of recuperation and, if necessary, of regeneration. There are
four points in the little book and they are the foundation of all
g^racious living, and they become the uplifters of the individual, of
the home, of the nation. It is against these four points that
directly, or indirectly, all anti-Christians warfare is waged. Those
j!^. truths are a divine Creator, a divine Redeemer, a divine Church
3^^. and a divine Destiny.

The existence of God as man's creator is a fact of which
scarcely any notice is taken. Natural theology as a science is brushed
out of the way like a cobweb. Into what a chaos the whole moral
world is thus thrown is patent to every one.

How magnificently the great Creator is held up for the worship
of His creatures in the initial lines of the Catechism, strikes some
minds by the marvellous and emphatic statement which our paro-
chial and Sunday school children learn as soon as they are able to
lisp, strikes some minds who meet it for the first time with the
vividness of a distinct revelation. Our boys and girls have the
primal fact so impressed on their intelligence that it takes more
than any ordinary assault of the powers of darkness to dislodge it
from their minds. It is a life-line for them through all the vicissi-
tudes of existence, and how eagerly they grasp it when they are

INTRODUCTION xiii

confronted with the awful reality of death! The question and the
answer, the first question and the first answer of their Catechism
are biblical in their simplicity and force: "Who made the world?"
God made the world."

The discipline, the intellectual discipline of negation is the only
one administered in so many outside schools. There is no God,
yea, and there is no world — we are phantoms all, and phantoms
only do we pursue. The foremost of facts rejected, what is left in
pedagogy? The same is true of the second startling reality of a
redemption effected by a divine Redeemer and likewise of the other
momentous truths : a divine Church and a divine Destiny. All that
is Godlike vanishes from the minds of men, and in its place what
hideous fetishes are set up for worship. All this is trite, but that
detracts nothing from the necessity of emphasizing it opportunely
and inopportunely. "Going, therefore, teach all nations," is a man-
date which is always in force in the Church, and the teaching that
Christ enjoined upon His Apostles, and which is still and will
always be obligatory upon their successors is the teaching of the
essential doctrine contained in the pages of the Catechism. With
his Bible and his Catechism the priest can yet go forth and conquer
the world. This victory might be his with his Catechism only, but
never without it.

The world needs to be baptized in the Holy Ghost and in fire,
for it Is as true to-day as then that His fan is in His hand, and He
will thoroughly cleanse His floor and gather His wheat into the
barn, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire. How
numberless and varied are the subjects suggested by the Catechism !
How it flows over with inspiration and how it has lent itself in the
past, and how at all times it will lend itself to the highest flights of
eloquence ! Of no man can it be said more aptly that he is formi-

xiv INTRODUCTION

dable than of him whose one book is the Catechism. It is a trumpet
call to those who by their exalted calling are physicians of souls.
It summons them to go out on the highways and on the byway and
gather all into the wedding feast.

We are priests forever and we are charged at all times as
Timothy was charged by Paul. II Timothy, "I^ charge thee before
God and Jesus Christ who shall judge the living and the dead by
His coming and His kingdom : Preach the word, be instant in sea-
son and out of season . . . fulfil thy ministry in doctrine,
sound speech, in much patience, in tribulation, in necessities, in dis-
tresses, in stripes, in knowledge, in long suffering, in sweetness, in
the Holy Ghost, in the word of truth, in the power of God."

It was to a Catechist that St. Paul made this stirring appeal.
Timothy and the other disciples, as well as the Apostles, taught
in their time nothing but Catechism. It jvas in the Catechism that
the^ world was won over to Christ. As it was then it is to-day. In
thje Catechism is the antidote for all the venom with which the
minds of men are being inoculated to-day. So all the principles
of pedagogy are resumed in the one counsel — first and last and
always be faithful to the Catechism. Volumes might be printed and
read expounding ways and means for the training of youth and
their mental development in all the branches of modern culture;
systems of pedagogy may be elaborated learnedly and skilfully,
but they will all come to naught if the underlying principles which
it belongs to the province of Catechetics to explain are disregarded.
God made the world, He holds it in the hollow of His hand, and
He sustains it by His wisdom and power and indispensable con-
currence. He is the beginner and finisher of all things, and with-
out Him was made nothing that was made. Outside of Him is
neither life nor light, only death and darkness. Hence, where He

INTRODUCTION xv

is not in all human activity there is nothing but decadence and
decay. Without Him there is darkness in philosophy and corrup-
tion in ethics, divorce and childlessness and cruelty and heartless-
ness in the family, disobedience and unhappiness in the home, in the
individual dissolution, in the State revolution and anarchy and
greed and unjustifiable ambition.

Christian, genuine Christian, pedagogy is aware of all this, and
never becomes unmindful of it, and so its influence is beneficial and
strong throughout the whole domain of intellectual progress, and
so it produces philosophers loving and finding truth, artists of pen
or pencil creating beauty, the employer worthy of his wealth, the
laborer earning his wage, the citizen upright and patriotic, and the
migistrate as high in his integrity as his authority is exalted.

A Handbook of Pedagogy

Part I. Christian Pedagogy

I. PEDAGOGY

PedagQ^ is the exploitation qf *hf- rhilA Its end is undoubtedly
lofty, but whether the means employed are always justifiable is a
question as yet under discussion, and it continues to give anxiety
to those whose motives are unsuspected and whose solicitude for
the child's best interests is outside of all dispute. Pedagogy, in the
sense above attributed to it and which covers all other descriptions
of it, has been in use, methodically or otherwise, since the advent of
the first offspring of Adam and Eve. Unfortunately, history is com-
pelled to put on record that Adam's success with his children was
not ideal. One of his sons was refractory unto the very bounds of
rebellion. It is sad to relate that the first mother gave birth to the
first murderer. The conclusion is that at the early date spoken of,
pedagogy, in whatever way it was applied, was, to say the least,
consummately inadequate. We shudder at the thought that, if
primeval heredity held sway in that inflexible manner which to so
many seems its prerogative, there would be no family in all the gen-
erations since without a homicide. If the law of atavism was un-
bending, there would have been no home without a black sheep in
the guise of a wandering and undisciplined boy.

From the start is evinced the need of training the child,
or what is the same thing, the need of some kind of pedagogy. The

2 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

suggestion arises at the same time that there are leading notions
to be kept in view without which no system of education may be
considered complete. Right at the beginning, before things could,
of course, be brought within the limits of rule, in the bosom
of the original family and before outside influences were pos-
sible, we have to deplore the fact that the child is not born
%, perfect, that it has instincts for good and evil, that it is in
>» its own hands for safety or destruction, that heredity is not
•^^^ infallible in its results, that it may resemble morally or may not
^, resemble morally its parents, that it is a free agent, that it needs
y^ control and direction, that no matter how much parents may do for
f, it, it may prove recalcitrant. All this is written on the surface of
the first home — ^the first home be it remembered, where there was no
ancestry to hold to account, unless we hale in for special pleading
those remote progenitors who grinned in the branches of trees, and
laid the foundations, among the cocoanuts, of the race which to-day
boasts of civilization than which nothing ever was more glori-
ous. There are not a few who contend that the strongest
argument in favor of present theories of the descent of man is to
be found in the fact that there are so many human beings who seem
to exhibit a reversion to a type without intellectuality or emotion,
to a type which had no vestige of mind, to a type which is ex-
emplified only in foxes, jackals and monkeys as they are known
to us to-day. A mere animal is an organized substance, purely
material, unspiritual, endowed with senses and with instincts
to develop the cravings of those senses and to pander exclusively to
their gratification. If this approximates a correct definition, then
must zoology include within its province a very large number of men
and women who in this twentieth century force upon us so glaringly
the characteristics which are to be found in the fauna of naturaJ

PEDAGOGY 3

history only and this with a depravity as notorious as it is deplor-
able. This is neither pessimism nor digression. It is not digression,
for it is a sidelight on the child, and pedagogy is simply a treatise
on child-culture. The object of any study must be examined from
every point of view and any conclusion relating to child training
reached without glancing at all its bearings, would, in proportion,
be unreliable. The history of the child must be taken into consid-
eration and no fact which concerns childhood must be neglected.
Pedagogy which sets aside the family and its origin and its consti-
tution, sets aside a factor very essential toward the settlement of
the question at issue. This all supposes that pedagogy is a science.
How and whether it is a science is remanded to another chapter.
Practical pedagogy, or, what might be termed subconscious pedagogy,
is very ancient. It dates back to the first child and to the first
father and the first mother. It is not in the least rash to say
that nature planted among the provisions with which she equipped
parents tendencies decidedly pedagogical. Among the fearful re-
sponsibilities of man are those of paternity and maternity and they
call for some light and some strength to accomplish the task which
they impose. So, with the first birth, pedagogy had its origin.

Pedagogy, as we know it in its present form, is of comparatively
recent date. Since letters began, we have had writers who, briefly
or otherwise, specially or incidentally, have treated the theme.
This idea is better expressed by Monroe in his text-book on the "His-
tory of Education." He says : "Primitive society reveals education
in its simplest form ; yet in this early stage the educational processes
possess all the essential characteristics that it reveals in its most
highly developed stage." He takes it for granted, however, that the
first age of society was a barbarous one and so discredits himself
somewhat in the eyes of those who still hold to the Biblical account

4 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

of the race. "No system of schools is to be found, no body of knowl-
edge or subjects of study, that serve indirectly as a basis for conduct
of life, have yet been organized. The method employed throughout
is simple, unconscious imitation. Only in the highest stages of prim-
itive life, where it passes from the barbarian to that stage of culture
which we call civilization, does the method of instruction appear."
The life of the primitive man, in the opinion of Monroe, that is, the
educational life of the primitive man, was determined by "Animism,"
that is, the interpretation of their environment so that exist-
ence had for him a twofold duty, the duty of acquiring means for
the satisfaction of the wants of the body, and the duty of placating,
controlling or avoiding the enmity of the world of spirits, through
forms of worship. Rightly understood, this primitive man was
as pedagogically busy as his ultimate successor. He was activelyen-

ii] gaged in keeping body and soul together. This is about the meaning
of hfe m this century, and m a general way we might say at the very
first that pedagogy, to be perfect, must give accurate information

^* of the individual and relative values of soul and body, of the means
of promoting the advantages of both hore and Iicrcafter. His-
torically, pedagogy traces its origin as far back as recorded history
goes. The history of education, if properly conceived and written,
that is, in the hands of a consummate literary artist, could undoubt-
edly be made a fascinating volume. That such a volume does not
exist is probable.

Writers have approached the theme down different avenues and
presented the results of their labors in different forms. Some have
thrown their ideas into the shape of a novel. Perhaps this method
may please some, certainly it does not attract all, for a very large
number of enlightened readers never look for philosophy or science
or religion in the page of a romance. There is something perturbing

PEDAGOGY 5

in pedagogy as a subject for didactic treatment. It is a vast subject.
It ramifies in every direction. It embraces all the centuries of hu-
man life. It is absolutely encyclopedic. No one man could hold
it in his grasp. The readers of these chapters will find in them only
a few items of the great theme presented. The only raison d'etre
of these pages, is that possibly a few orthodox considerations on
what has grown to be a branch of all formal teaching, when pre-
sented briefly and clearly, might contain some helpful atom of in-
formation and in this prove not undesirable. Of the making of
books there is no end. Whoever first dropped this remark spoke a
formula which suits every period and uttered a phrase that is truer
of pedagogy, as it flourishes now, than of any other science. Verily,
of the making of books on pedagogy there is no end. Yet when there
are such multitudinous ripples and in one direction it signifies that
somewhere there is a strong current, the trend of which must be
ascertained, lest it lead out to uncharted and therefore danger-
ous seas.

That pedagogy is attracting such marked attention is not in
itself to be regretted. It means that the world is being awakened to
the need of looking after the child. Perhaps in many ages there was
this same agitation. Beyond question, at all times, there has been an
ambition to win the child to ways of betterment, intellectual and
spiritual. Winning the child is momentous in its significance. The
motive of every efifort on this path must be cross examined. The
danger lies there. The child is the storm center. Men of all kinds,
organizations of all stripes, clamor for the child. What do they
want him for? What do the state, the church, commerce, the
professions, the army, the navy, the school, the college, the univer-
sity, want the child for? For it is true that all these agencies
are trying to capture him. They all, every one of them, present their

6 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

claim to the possession of him. One reason is professional, com-
mercial, civic pride. Another reason is — let us call the first the mo-
tive and this last the reason — the reason is that so much is bound up
in the child, in the youth. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the
world — yes, but not without the co-operation of the sleeper in the
cradle. He is a form compacted of infinite possibilities and the actu-
ating of every one of them depends upon the training of his youth.
The child is the family, the child is the state, the child is the nation,
the child is the universe, and as he is so are they. They all have
their methods of molding him. They all have their manuals of child-
culture. They all have their pedagogies and as their pedagogies di-
rect the child lives and acts. So pedagogy deserves watching.

There is a pedagogy, and better is it to go back to the woods and
the trees than to follow its leading. There is a pedagogy which,
because neutral, is colorless and un stimulating. There is a peda-
gogy which takes the child and uplifts his whole nature. There is a
pedagogy which saves and a pedagogy which ruins; which kidnaps
and holds the child away from home for a ransom. How colossal
the ransom! How debilitated the child returned!

THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF PEDAGOGY

II. THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF PEDAGOGY

The last section, by its very nature introductory, touched in a
general way upon pedagogics. The definition seems to cover the
ground adequately enough. The question arises, what place, if any,
does this latest comer hold among the sciences, or has it any scientific
value — is it a science at all ? It had to face the opposition of a host
of adversaries, all of whom belonged to the old school. This antag-
onism, in the minds of many, is reason sufficient to admit it to the
position in the world's advance it lays claim to. One of the greatest
thinkers of two centuries ago said : "It is never wise entirely to de-
part from tradition.'* When Burke affirmed that, he gave ex-
pression to two principles, the one asserting that no matter how
old a theory was, its antiquity was rather in its favor than against
it, the other that the world of thought can not remain stationary, and
so new views may, in spite of their youth, be well worth investi-
gation. His tenet was that extremes must be avoided, for truth,
like virtue, lies midway. An opinion must be rejected neither be-
cause of its age nor its infancy. If wisdom is a desirable attribute of
the age, it must dictate in all contests a spirit of conciliation.

For a long time, the attitude against pedagogy as a science, was
very marked and very determined. The slogan seemed to be that
there were teachers before Froebel or Rousseau, teachers just as
successful, perhaps more so, teachers as zealous, teachers who be-
queathed to posterity men and women whom they had help lift into
the galaxy of bright particular stars, the light and solace of their
generation. Pedagogy was looked upon as a nouveaii riche, as a
usurper, as an upstart, which the old guard could not brook. Pos-
sibly this attitude is maintained by very few just now. Yet, willing as

8 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOCV

the majority may be to admit this new claimant to a citizenship of
toleration, the issue is not ultimately decided and no absolute ver-
dict that it is a science has been rendered. It has been productive
of much good, it has thrown much light on educational processes,
it has, above all, directed intelligent inquiry to the child, it has
created an ambition to leave no child outside of its pale and to
employ all conceivable means toward the proper up-bringing of
the same. This is a large gain.

Gentlemen of an older day can not be blamed, however, for what-
ever reluctance they manifested in accepting pedagogy on its own
credentials. They had learned well the lesson of the past. They
had seen claimants rise and then sink forever. Many who came to
the fore under the shelter of some or other science they had wit-
nessed discomfited and driven from the field for all time. They re-
membered, to adduce one instance, that in the year 1806, the French
Institute enumerated no less than eighty geological theories which
were hostile to the Scriptures, not one of which theories is held to-
day. They had become suspicious of the very name of science.
Science, in the hands of unscrupulous adherents, took on a bold
aspect and, swollen with ambition, pre-empted the vast area of intel-
lectuality for itself. In fact, what is understood by the multitude as
science ?

When one talks of a scientist or of science, is the term used to
signify a theologian or theology; a metaphysician or metaphysics?
Not at all. A scientist to-day is a physicist, a chemist, a geologist, a
biologist. Strange usurpation, this, a usurpation which explains the
baseless assertions, the negations which are scattered up and down
the whole extent of what is understood as scientific literature.
There is no dogmatism so aggressive and intransigeant as
the dogmatism of science. It is only the meeting of cer-

THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE OP PEDAGOCV 9

tain deliberate utterances in print that makes us willing to admit
that views have been enunciated which, while they shock reason, are
audacious to the very limit of insolence, ignorance and mendacity.
All this has created a prejudice which, like all prejudice, prevents,
in many cases, impartiality. Yet, when all is summed up, not so
much are the adversaries to blame as is science itself.

The conscience of science is logic, and many a time and oft has the
still, small voice been unheeded and conclusions vaunted which had
no warrant either in fact or inference. The foregoing has this much
to do with pedagogy, that it may help to an explanation of a position
which was too hastily assumed and provoked recrimination unworthy
and unjustifiable. Theological odium has been commented on
unsparingly and scorchingly by an odium just as virulent as itself.
There is such a thing as odium scientiUcum, and such a thing as
odium pedagogicum. All the odiums resolve themselves in that sen-
sitiveness plus jealousy which abounds, alas, so frequently, when the
trumpet rings out a new note, compelling cohorts to rally round the
flags of rival systems. This procedure is not scientific, nor is it
science. There is one attitude safe and dignified. It is the attitude
of the open mind, the mind which is cordial to every opinion until
it proves its unworthiness, the mind which is calm and serene and
unafraid, the mind which knows that the truth can not but prevail,
and so is willing to wait in the joy of the certainty that the future
is secure.

Pedagogy has not always been confronted with this mien. It has
made mistakes, and grievous ones, but what will we ? Is it not ever
thus? Every step the world has made forward, its heavy foot as
it fell has crushed out hopes, aspirations and ambitions. There
has never come a benefit to man that has not cost the race toil, moil,
health, wealth and even life. Everything that flourishes is rooted

lO CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

in the blood of victims. There is no other way upward and onward.
Gamaliel, "who taught according to the law of the fathers," gave ex-
pression to a standard of judgment which is applicable to all men,
all combinations of men, all theories and doctrines. "Ye men of
Israel, take heed to yourselves what you intend to do touching these
men. Refrain from these men and let them alone, for if this counsel
or this work be of men, it will come to naught, but if it be of God
you can not overthrow it." This is true of pedagogy as well as of
everything presented for acceptance to the minds or the practises of
man. What is true in pedagogy, or rather what is correct in every or
any pedagogical system, must stand in spite of all opposition. Peda-
gogy has a scientific value only in proportion to the value of the prin-
ciples upon which it is built. It has a scientific value according to the
validity of its scientific processes. To any one who has followed the
meanderings and the ramifications of this pedagogy, it is patent that
its advocates, while clamoring for the education of the child, not
only put forward difiFerent plans, but begin their efforts animated by
views largely at variance with each other.

A word about science in general will elucidate matters. Aristotle
will be believed, when he defines science as a syllogistic process com-
pelling knowledge. It is the efiFect of demonstration and thus there
will be no opposition to one who states that science is not any kind
of knowledge, but the knowledge of things in their causes. Again
to quote the Stagy rite : "Science is the knowledge of the causes of
things, is the knowing what those causes are, and the certainty that
the thing known could not have been caused in any other way."
It follows that the fuller the knowledge of causes is, the fuller is
one's science. In a word, nothing can be styled science unless the
cause, its causality, its absolute and necessary connection with the
effect be ascertained. These were the ideas of perfect knowledge

THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF PEDAGOGY ii

received from the ancient philosophy and propagated in those ages
of scholasticism so igorantly called the Dark Ages.

Tried by this definition, how much of science is contained in
the systematized pedagogy of ours and other times? In all scien-
tific knowledge there must be an appeal to first principles, that is,
principles almost generally known and certainly consciously or sub-
consciously admitted. Pedagogy, if it demands a place among the
sciences, must show that its treatment of its subject matter is scien-
tific. The boy, the girl, he or she, is the subject matter. They
can not be treated to any very large degree in a tentative manner.
Neither in mind nor in body should they be made the object of ex-
periment. The law of all experimenting is that it must be tried on
a corpus vile or, is it permissible to say, upon the dog. Again,
there are certain principles forbidding experimenting along certain
lines. The child must, as much as possible, be studied and learned
according to the measure of the causality which has brought it into
being. Much room for reflection here, much to give one pause.
Whence comes the child? To whom is the teacher responsible for
the results of the training? To God, to the parents, to society? What
are the obligations which the child will find confronting it, when the
years of discretion are reached, on account of its origin?

Then there are the possibilities of the child, so innumerable, not
one of which is to be neglected. Above all, there is the eternal des-
tiny of the boy and the girl. These are first principles, and demon-
strable consequences follow from them. Any method which refuses
to consider these is not thorough and therefore is not scientific.
That there is a pedagogy which affirms and demonstrates these
primary maxims or rather fundamental facts, there is the whole
history of the Church to attest. It has a method of its own,
guided by these fixed and immutable truths. How scientific this

12

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY.

method is throughout its whole extent is another matter. If there is
at any time a break in the chain, then the scientific nature of the
process is null and void. It were safer to call pedagogy an art as
yet. It is young, and no wonder that its yearnings are not all grati-
fied. But this much must hold. Let it be encouraged. A time will
surely come when it will be pruned of the many excrescences which
disfigure it now, when it will be like a tree which is planted near the
running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit in due season.
By their fruits we know them and by their fruits we must judge
them.

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY. 13

III. CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

Christian pedagogy is a term which explains itself, and it is
patent to everybody that it means the upbringing of the child ac-
cording to the principles which have been introduced into the world
by Christianity. It is an easy matter to call everything said in rela-
tion to it a platitude. Yet platitudes do not always mean utterances
that have been heard for ages, and by everybody, and are under-
stood by all. Granting, however, that they were, and were nothing
more, it is not the characteristic of sound sense to decry them and to
banish them from the pens and the tongues of men. If they have
grown old in the speech of men it is because there is in them a
truth so forceful that their application is demanded by the necessi-
ties of every-day experience, and because it is always hazardous to
build up any plans, whether for education or for anything else, with-
out taking them into consideration. Thoughts which soar above
their level will soon topple over without them. Such thoughts
are birds with broken wings. Possibly no so-called platitudes
have been so maligned as have the underlying principles of re-
ligion. Yet, pardon the platitude, they are as irrepressible as they
are commonplace. They must accompany every deliberate act,
and the being who disregards their mandate, no matter what his
pursuit, is a man whose conscience is laying up reproaches or re-
morse against him.

The sooner a budding life is imbued with these principles the
safer will the outlook be and the larger the chance of reaching the
haven. If they have a legitimate place in the systems by which
some men propose to mold other men, there is no limit to their
beneficial influence. St. Paul says (I Cor. iv), "You have ten

14 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers." In the
Latin, "pedagogi" is the term which has been translated "in-
structors." What does he mean by ten. thousand pedagogues in
Christ in opposition to "fathers in Christ"? Are they only "so-
called instructors" in Christ? Evidently he makes a distinction be-
tween those pedagogues and himself. Evidently the distinction
implies a caution of some kind or a reproach. Are they "instructors"
only, or are they educators as well? Whatever his mind, the
utterance is an almost photographic reproduction by anticipation
of the conditions of pedagogy to-day. For just now there are cer-
tainly ten thousand and more pedagogues to-day and as many
systems. Just now there are pedagogues a-many who are only
"instructors," and a very small proportion who are, in the strict
meaning of the term, educators.

The "instructor" does not exploit the whole child. The "edu-
cator" has in his purpose the development of the child in its en-
tirety. The pedagogy which limits its efforts to. instruction only
does not merit the name of scientific. This application belongs
justly to the pedagogy which educates. This essential difference
between education and instruction has been always conceded by
men who think adequately. Instruction addresses itself mainly to
the mind as a faculty to be trained, and, if you will, to the senses
as organs to be drilled into an adeptness in the discharge of their
several functions. Enlightenment only is its aim. Morality is not
as important, in instruction, as learning and facility and mental and
sensile lissomeness. With educators enlightenment is accompanied
by formation of character, which is so momentous that the cautious
pedagogue would consider the former without the latter a most
dangerous acquisition for the child, for the family and for society.
They go so far in this direction, that, were it ever necessary to

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY 15

sacrifice one to the other, they would advocate unhesitatingly to
abandon enlightenment rather than character. Given a man with
just knowledge enough to know the natural law in its most general
precepts and a will determined to keep them, such an one they would
recommend rather than an individual accomplished in the highest
mental degree — a genius if you will, but unformed to govern, direct
and control depraved instincts or greed or lawless ambition. This
is putting it very strong, but it is putting it most certainly ac-
curately. All this is truism; all this is platitude; but it is all un-
deniable and all practical.

The pedagogical method which ignores this or denies this, is
antagonistic to the most fundamental notions of Christianity. As
a definition of Christian pedagogy this might be offered : Christian
pedagogy is that method of education which in all its details keeps
in mind those great principles and those great facts which are
taught and maintained and sanctioned by the Church of Christ.
It is not advanced that every system which advocates and incul-
cates the principles of the Church is for that alone perfect. No
prudent man would make such an assertion. But it will be granted
that a system thus controlled is at least Christian. To be perfect it
must have other qualifications. A system to excel must be sys-
tematically Christianizing and systematically perfect in its enlight-
enment or instruction. A writer has said that a perfect character
is a perfectly fa,<;bionprl will This certainly does not fall outside of
the truth. The will is the rudder of the individual. It is more, it is
the hand on the rudder. It is even more, it is the wind, the steam,
the electrigity. in a word, thmiptor power. It must be lit uo. this
will of man. Before it, must revolve and shine the searchlight
showing the pathless waters over which it is journeying. For if
those waters should not be pathless, they must be charted. This

I

/

i6 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

necessity of illumination is incontrovertible. But the will needs
to be strong to control and sway the huge bulk — as yet unweighed,
as yet unmeasured — of the man himself. The more light the will
possesses and the more strength it has in reserve, the more per-
fectly fashioned the will is and the more perfect the man is.

Amajg^h what his will is,. A strong will in the direction of good
makes the strong good man; a will strong in the direction of evil
makes the strong bad man, just as a feeble will in any direction
makes the weak man, makes the nonentity. Applying these gener-
alities to the matter at issue, it will be a simple inference to state
that a perfect Christian pedagogy is the_.SYs.tem which makes the
child a perfectly educated Christian. There can exist a pedagogy
which, while it is Christianizing, is far from developing the mind
according to all its faculties and their capabilities and the demands
that are made by the increasing culture of the age.

There can exist a pedagogy which, while it makes a good Chris-
tian, does not make a good scholar. To be plain, there are schools
where religious training is very thorough, but intellectua,.! ^ cultiva-
tion is deplorably deficient. There are such schools; there are such
colleges; but they are fast disappearing. These teachers can not
be accused of desiring such a condition of things in the main, but
can they be excused from the imputation that some of the responsi-
bility lies at the door of a by no means blameless inactivity, which
is due to many causes, nearly all censurable, due tojdiscouraj^em^
or lack of encouragernent, or an absence of initiative, or a wantof
being in touch with the age, which is at all times, in some or other
way, but surely, progressive? It is not necessarily due to poverty.
This at times may have had something to do with it, but to plead
poverty is to forget the whole history of intellectual struggle which,
in the case of so many distinguished for learning, was the struggle

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY 17

against the sorest kind of privations. Certainly it is not attributable
to a low grade of intelligence, talent, ability, call it what you will.
Such an assertion would be a manifest exposure of the grossest
ignorance.

The proposition of Balmez has not, as yet, been disproved. Con-
sidering the existence of the Church for eighteen centuries, in spite
of so many powerful adversaries, as an extraordinary thing, he
points to another pedagogy "too little attended to and of not less
importance when the nature of the human mind is taken into ac-
count," which is: "The unity of the Church's doctrines, pervading
as it does all her various instructions, and the number of great
minds which this unity has always inclosed within her bosom."
In his eloquent way he adduces historical proof. Summed up, it is
his contention that the Church has in all ages possessed men illus-
trious for science, that the history of the fathers is the history of
the most learned men in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa. The whole
passage is of priceless beauty and all who read can not help being
carried away by his rapturous finale. "I see the illustrious race
still continue through the calamities of the eighteenth century ; and
in the nineteenth I see the fresh heroes who, after having followed
error in all directions, come to hang their trophies at the gates of
the Catholic Church. What, then, is this prodigy ? Has a sect or a
religion like it ever before been seen ? These men study everything,
reply to everything, know everything ; but always agreeing in unity
of doctrine, they bend their noble and intellectual brows in respect-
ful obedience to faith. Do we not seem to behold another planetary
system, where globes of fire revolve in their vast orbits in immensity,
always drawn to their center by a mysterious attraction? That
central force which allows no aberration, takes from them nothing
of their extent or of the grandeur of their movement; but it inun-

i8 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

dates them with light while giving to their motions a more majestic
regularity."

Doubtless toward the end of the twentieth century there will ap-
pear another writer who will speak in equally inspired and moving
terms of other sons and other daughters of the Church. Where it
is easy to point out what may or may not be the cause of failure
in Catholic education, it is not so easy to point to the remedy. Fail-
ure is perhaps not the right term. It might be more accurate to
say that it is difficult to determine wherein lies the reason why a
fuller measure of success has not been accorded to educational in-
stitutions of our own faith. Can it be said that poverty is the unde-
niable source of what we may have to deplore? Not in every case.
The dilatory march of Christian pedagos^y in this country is, prob-
^. ably, not seldom to be attributed as much to want of initiative, and
'L to excessive hesitation about compromising with the spirit of the
times in which we live, as to any other cause. Christian pedagogy
has the same rights and the same obligations as any other system
of education, be it neutral or antichristian. Rights have never yet
been maintained without a fight. Lethargy in entering the struggle
which must be made is almost synonymous with defeat. Allowing
the adversary to possess weapons of a superior caliber to our own is
a proof of unwisdom and poor generalship. Pedagogies opposed to
ours have invaded every field of activity. It is not too late to profit
by their example. They insist on the kindergarten, the high school,
the college, the university, and the advanced education of women.
It is ours to do the same. They tolerate mediocrity in no grade of
teaching; they appeal to state and individual for support and en-
couragement ; their Christian rivals may go and do likewise. It may
be vam effort. First no effort is ever empty handed, it always
achieves something. Then if for a period it is unpromising, it will

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY 19

not be for long. The reward will come when least expected, but
come it will for all that. We speak not of the reward in eternity,
but also of the splendid compensation in time.

II

20 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

IV. PRACTICAL WORK OF CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

Rarely do we find among the accepted things of life what is not
of some value to man. The question is always asked: What is it
worth? What good is it? "Cui bono" is a proof that the same
standard existed in every age of the world. The underlying idea of
all this is not one to be repudiated. There is a shrewdness about it
to be commended. In a way it is an application of the Scriptural
advice to ally the prudence of the serpent with the simplicity of the
dove. The guiding principle of all trading worthy the name was
implied in the question put by the Saviour: " WA^tadPl^bi, .it P^Q^^
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?" "What
will a man give in exchange for his soul?" Men's souls have
been bartered away, are being bartered away, and the loss thereof
is, in so many instances, never thought of and the priceless treas-
ure is left in bondage forever. The maxim of men which seems
to prevail more largely than any other is that it profits to gain
the whole world, and hence the question has been expressed in
a somewhat changed form: What doth it profit a man to gain his
soul if he lose the whole world?

And what is the practical value of Christian pedagogy? It has
a value that should give it a preference, even if all other things are
not equal, over the pedagogy that is not Christian. It has the
practical worth which all normal pedagogy has, plus the Christianiz-
ing energies that it brings to bear upon the training of the child.
Pedagogy assumes the direction of many activities. When it is
remembered that there are very few, if any, faculties in the child
which do not, in some way or other, become in its hands a power
which may be misdirected along the lines of moral responsibility, it

PRACTICAL WORK OF CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY 21

will be accorded that everything in the child may be cultivated for
good or for evil, may be rendered Christian or not Christian. Im-
mediately the evidence is in favor of Christian pedagogy. If one
looks down the contents of any book on pedagogics he will perceive
that there are numerous questions to be answered, numerous prob-
lems presenting themselves for solution. There is an abundance of
material. As a case in point there is the table of contents in a work
entitled, "Lectures on Pedagogy, Theoretical and Practical," by
Gabriel Compayre, who, while a professor in some French normal
school, is a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He has chapters
on education in general, physical education, intellectual education,
the education of the senses, culture of the attention, culture of the
memory, culture of the imagination, the faculties of reflection, judg-
ment, abstraction, reasoning, feelings, moral education, will, liberty,
habit, higher sentiments, esthetic and religious education. This
sums up the theoretical part, and is certainly enough for our thesis,
which is that Christian pedagogy is of practical worth.

Its worth, in the order of intellectual culture, will depend on the
value of its system and the skill and acquirements of its advocates,
its professors. In the domain of theory, of ideas, it has within it
the wherewithal to render incalculable service. The order of theory
is momentous in its consequences. Disastrous effects in every
province have flown not so much from illogical sequence as from
wrong premises. Christian pedagogy, inasmuch as it is Christian,
is luminous beyond any other. If genuine it is not going to advance
views hazardous in any ethical way. To revert. Examining simply
the array of matter presented by Mons. Compayre, we are struck
with the massive importance of it all. We understand that if the
truth is to be had at all, it should be had regarding general educa-
tion, religious education, will, mind and habits. To go astray rela-

22

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

tively to these is to go very far astray in many other things vital in
their essence. Not only is there a possibility of missing the goal
herein, but, as is evident in the writings of a multitude of theorists,
there have actually been wrong landmarks set up, and in many
cases there is no question of reaching the goal, but the goal has been
obliterated utterly. Given false notions about religion, religious
education will be false, and the same is true of will, habit and soul.
Hence when we investigate the worth, in a practical sense, of Chris-
tian pedagogy we are compelled to grant that on its moral side it is
'" better in its influences than any contradictory system, tliat for will
llifrf trammg;^ which is the essense of all training, it is without a peer.
I ~This is high praises to give to Christian pedagogy, but it is
*iA neither exaggerated nor unmerited. It is only memorializing the
jjj^ , patent and potent effects of our religion. When we are mindful of
the saving truths taught and propagated by it, when we remember
the efficacy of the Sacraments, when we recall all that the Church
can do for the uplifting of the individual, and therefrom deduce all
the blessings it has the power to confer on society at large, we are
irresistibly led to conclude that the injection of Christianity into
pedagogics is the introduction of a dynamic force without which
education would be barren of results, there where results are most
telling upon the constitution of social existence.

It might be said, and it may be conceded, that constant attention
^1 to the religious element in education may easily work counter to
*^ intellectual development. It is claimed that solicitude for the spirit-
ual features of education may beget a conservatism which will send
out into the world boys and girls, young men and young women,
unfit to cope with those who have been reared in an atmosphere of
a higher, or, rather, a more largely cultivated mentality. This is cer-
tainly possible. It is, however, accidental to the scheme, and it is

PRACTICAL WORK OF CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY 23

hoped that in time it will yield to strong and constant pressure as, in
other lands and here and there in our own country, it has yielded.
The spirit and the caution are certainly admirable. It is in conformity
with the view already alluded to. It comes from a fear "to be the
first by whom the new is tried." If this fear compels them to be
"the last to lay the old aside" it is to be hoped that though the latest
comers, they will soon forge to the front in their application of old-
time courage to new-found obstacles. It will soon be realized that
all they ask is a fair field and no favor.

This is only a statement of one of the obstacles which must be met
and overcome by Christian pedagogy. There is no doubt that this
science has a value of a very practical nature. What is primary in all
education it furnishes, and furnishes abundantly. All that it incul-
cates regarding the origin and destiny of the child are in the direction
of elevation. But it does more. It controls all the sciences by its
dogmas and its commands, for they are the dogmas and the obliga-
tions imposed by the Church. Its doctrine is light, plentiful to
guide the feet of science as it journeys on its magnificent voyages
of discoveries. It does not trammel. It says to every intellectual
agency to go forth and conquer. It repudiates no achievement of
science. It places at the disposal of all, who will, the whole world
of facts. It simply holds up a finger of warning. It says, in
charity for the gropings of human limitations, to keep the eye up-
lifted and fixed upon the tenets of religion. It illumines all the
sciences — all logic, all psychology, all ethics, by the flashing lights
radiating from landmarks outside of which there is danger. What
more can be said in its favor as a branch of learning than that it is
so practical that it is helpful in every way. It is useful always, for
always while it cheers and stimulates it protects and saves. Its
value is eminently practical.

24 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY.

V. THE SUBJECT OF PADAGOGY — ^YOUTH

What Father Faber writes in the preface to his "The Blessed
Sacrament" may, and with greater reason, be written here. He
says: "If any should censure me for writing another book on a
subject on which so many have been already written, I would say
in self-defense that I have not written with a view either of super-
seding the works of others or of teaching anything new, but I plead
as my excuse the words of St. Austin, Me Trinitate, i. 3': 'Utile est
plures a pluribus fieri libros, diverso stylo, non diversa fide, etiam de
quaestionibus iisdem, ut ad plurimos res ipsa perveniat, ad alios sic,
ad alios autem sic' It is a good thing that many make many
books, different in style but identical in faith, yet about the same
matter, for thus the subject is brought to the attention of a larger
number, some treating it in one way, some in another." Let this
express a reason, if not an excuse, for these chapters on Christian
pedagogy.

As was said in the beginning, pedagogy is the exploitation of the
child or of the youth. Exploitation has one meaning only, if many
uses and innumerable methods. Before proceeding to methods and
uses, it will not be unprofitable to attempt a fathoming of the mean-
ing. Derivation is always suggestive. Radically the word spells a
filling out, a completing, a perfecting. To exploit is "to put to use,"
"to make completely available," and again "to search for or after,"
"to explore in quest of." As a noun it takes on the import of a
deed, an act, more especially an act marked by heroism, spirit, dar-
ing or adventure. Evolved into "exploitation" we have a term in-
dicative of the process of bringing out into use of hitherto neglected

THE SUBJECT OF PEDAGOGY— YOUTH 25

natural resources. Recent lexicographers affirm that, in these days,
it means to use these resources in selfish schemes, for one's own
advantage without regard to right or rights. Many as are the
meanings of "exploitation," there is no doubt that it expresses
clearly enough what is understood by pedagogy. In fact, there is
not an acceptance of the term which can not be applied to pedagogy
in part or entirely, and to its aims, whether in the hands of manipu-
lators that are selfish or self-sacrificing, lofty or mean, satisfactory
or otherwise. For every use of the word we will find theorizers and
theories in pedagogics. Whatever can be exploited, the child is.
The child is a mine, is a quarry, is a country, is everything and
anything that can tempt an explorer, a discoverer, an adventurer.

It is of this child, this youth, we are compelled to investigate the
being, the essence and the nature. Youth is a sunny world — it brings
with it a light and a smile. It appeals to every one of us. It looks at
us so brightly — does youth — so clear-eyed, so unafraid. We know it
so well. We had it, all of us, once — alas ! only once. It is because
it comes but once, it is because we only know it came and went
that it is so eloquent in its appeal. It is so beautifully lovable. It
is because we all recall, we all remember it, because it has charms
to soothe, aye! and sometimes to inspire, that we dwell lingeringly
upon it. It is so wholesome and breezy. Yet all we know of it is
an argument in favor of anything that enlightens, that helps it. For
this or that reason a man may not wish it back, but at some time or
other every man has turned yearningly toward it. For that it was
the theater of much bitterness or the prelude to much suffering one
may not regret its passing away, but who is there, thinking of its
chances, its possibilities, of how different the present would be had
the days of childhood been better lessoned, how lighter the burden,
and how less poignant the remorse, and how higher the plane and

z6 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

how purer the soul, and how stronger the strength of age would
be ifj on a certain day in a year that is fled, young feet had turned
down a different path — and it was so easy then to take that other
road — who thinking of all this would not gladly fling the present
to the wind to awaken a child again, even in poverty or in an age
void of all the luxury and comforts and progress of this century —
just to have another chance to smooth away rough-hewn ends?
The wish is vain. Yet there is some way of atoning. There is
always compensation. It may be found in so many manners, and
is not difficult of attainment. Chief among them might be placed
the exploitation of the child, an exploitation which, in addition to
ways and means, enriches the child by one's own experience, by
lessons learned from one's own childhood, one's own youth. *T love
God and little children," said Richter. God loves little children and
loves those who love them, who help them lovingly. God has
punishment for those who hate them, above all, those who hate them
unto the hurting them, whether the harm comes to body or to soul,
and surely if injury is done through mind to either or to both.

A review of the characterizing of the young necessarily deter-
mines the field of any real or so-called science appertaining to the
training of the child. What compels attention to this important
theme is the utter helplessness of the child. This, in a large meas-
ure, is a protection. It is more, it awakens sympathy and thus
brings assistance, which is a step in advance of protection. The
child must not only be safeguarded in its destitute condition, but
must be assisted toward methods of self-preservation against dan-
gers of body and mind, which perils are certain to overtake it. The
needs of the child in the beginning are emphatically physical. Here
the idea suggests itself that one of the first principles of all peda-
gogics is that both on parents and teachers lie, in varying measure.

THE SUBJECT OF PEDAGOGY—YOUTH 27

duties toward the physical and mental protection of the child from
the very beginning. These duties spring from fundamental rights
inherent in the child, and they devolve with crushing weight upon
fathers and mothers who created for themselves such obligations,
created them with forethought when they brought the infant into
existence.

While the exigency of very young childhood seems to be ex-
clusively material, it is not altogether so. Mere infancy is but the
beginning of all things, but this beginning is so fraught with con-
sequences that sometimes it is possible for foundations of such a
nature to be laid that upon them no superstructure but an unsafe
and tottering one can in the hereafter be erected. This holds,
whether the future be looked at from a moral or a physical point
of view. Habits, for example, may be acquired which not even a
whole lifetime of endeavor and battle are equal to cope with suc-
cessfully. The physical all through man's career has much to do
with the moral. It is beyond question that both combine with the
making of one indivisible unit, the component factors of which
always and inevitably react upon each other. The old formula for
human perfection advanced by the ancients and so frequently
quoted by all the centuries is luminous in all its bearings. "Mens
Sana in corpore sano"; a healthy body and a healthy mind are the
requisites of proper and adequate development at all times. Ex-
perience illuminated by this view has brought into prominence
hygiene, with all its ramifications and adaptations, and has organ-
ized a code of regulations which can be violated only at the expense
of moral as well as physical soundness. Nature has given to parents
instincts which if followed will conduce to the absolutely total wel-
fare of the child. Science has flooded these instincts with light to
such a degree that fidelity to their dictates has become for all

28 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

parents a task that is not beyond their powers, no matter what
their condition.

But the child grows apace, and so swiftly that almost like an
apparition flashes upon the family the boy, the girl. The loveliness
of both as they take on the winsomeness of budding intelligence and
general attractiveness is almost a shock to the parents, albeit a pleas-
ant one. It is precisely the moment when every precaution must be
taken to achieve the initial success of providing for most perfect
culture of this blossom into healthy and comely flowering. It is
precisely this moment in which cautious and wise treatment is
called for. How much watchfulness is required only the father and
mother are aware. It is precisely the moment when they must
come into closest co-operation if they wish to bring to maturity the
nursling committed to their care. Now, if ever, must mutual love
and self-sacrifice combine to prevent any evil influence from shat-
tering the realization of their fondest hopes.

The chief formative agency, for very providential reasons, with-
out doubt is exercised by the home in the earlier years. Home
education, however, as time goes by, must yield part of its sway to
the school. Herein lie the greatest dangers. What is the school
going to do for the youth? What kind of environment is it going
to create — environment of teachers, environment of companions?
Bitter and anxious moments will be passed by the parents, as they
think of the perils to be faced. Pedagogy comes to the rescue, at
least so it pretends. What the pretention Is worth remains to be in-
vestigated. There is no obligation more binding, just as there is
none more difficult of fulfilment on the part of the parents, than
the selection of the school and the teacher. Christian pedagogy, if
true to its principles, may trace a standard of choice and in so much
be helpful. What its affirmation on this point is there can be no

THE SUBJECT OF PEDAGOGY— YOUTH

29

manner of doubt. It all goes to show how momentous the position
of the parents is at this period.

This all helps to demonstrate how much everything relating to
the child are elements of a problem which, at all times, faces the
parent, the Church and the state. Of all problems youth is the
greatest. The possibilities of youth, its possibilities in the present,
its possibilities in the future, are innumerable and perplexing. They
prophesy benefit or they menace disaster to family, to Church and
to state. The whole fabric of society rests upon the child. What
can not the child do when it advances into manhood? The history
of all great men is the history of the child. As the child was so
was the man. Never a truer word than that the child is the father
of the man. Is it any wonder that the two great powers of civiliza-
tion, the Church and the state, await with solicitous expectancy the
development of the young? Is it any wonder that the state claims
supervision in the matter of pedagogy? Is it a cause of surprise
that the Church displays a deeper anxiety and fights for supremacy
to the last ditch? Both see that everything is at stake. Yes, peda-
gogy deserves watching — for there is a pedagogy which adds right-
eousness to enlightened citizenship, and there is a pedagogy which
merits the reprobation uttered by Christ (Matt, xviii, 6). It were
better for it that a millstone should be hanged about its neck and
that it should be drowned in the depth of the sea.

30 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

VI. HOME EDUCATION

Much has been written and said about home education, yet not
all has been well written or said, nor enough. It by its very nature
is an ever-recurring topic, and calls constantly for discussion. This
is especially the case now when the home in so many instances is
being assailed by enemies whose determination can not be over-
estimated and by theories pregnant with principles destructive of
this sublime agency for the upbringing of the child. And the pity
of it all is that the traitor is of the household. The fortress is ab-
solutely impregnable, if the inmates are knitted together in closest
bonds for the maintenance of rights which are among the most
sacred bestowed upon man by a bountiful Creator. But it is always
thus where the providence of God is involved. The more necessary
an institution is for the welfare of mankind the more persistently
and effectively is it hedged round by a solicitous divinity. As far
as man is concerned, the home is everything for him and it means
everything for him. Nor is home a mere structure, a mere abode,
a roof under which he is to find shelter against the elements. A
home is more than that. If not, then it signifies just as much as
the stall signifies to the ox or the nest for the robin.

A home firmly cemented in all its parts is a home anywhere and
everywhere. It is not a structure of wood or stone ; it can be either
a palace or a hovel. It is there where father and mother and child
are, but the father and the mother must have at least the heart of a
mother and of a father; but better yet if both heart and mind in
each dedicate all their energy to the safeguarding of the highest
concerns of the child here and hereafter. The atmosphere of the
home must be impregnated with love and devotion, else there is no

HOME EDUCATION

31

home, else the home instead of giving nurture and development to
the child, but presages incalculable evil for the days to come. Un-
fortunately, there are too many homes which are not homes, homes
in which the child is as surely orphaned as if death had snatched
away the parents. When, therefore, we speak of home education,
we refer to an education which is provided by a father and a
mother united in mutual love and directing all their activity to the
fostering of the child and the preparing it for the paths on which it
must travel and which are always bristling with perils of a nature
to make parents not only solicitous, but eager to undergo any sacri-
fice rather than send out the child into all the dreariness unequipped
for the journey.

The child's education, it has been more than once hinted, begins
with its first breath, and its first breath is drawn in the arms of its
mother. Needless to say that the mother more than the father will
have to draw upon all her resources in order to perform adequately
her duty. By her patience and long suffering she is called upon
to contribute her very large share to the comfort and happiness of
the family circle. In the beginning she will have more intimate
relations than the father with her child. How much she is able to
do is beyond calculation, and also beyond all reckoning is the harm
she can work. It was never, however, the intention of nature that
upon the shoulders of the mother was to be laid the whole burden
of education. The father comes in for his part, which is not to be
minimized, and which increases as the child advances in age.

In the previous chapter child-nature was considered, and from the
essentials of that nature are deducible all the obligations which are
paramount in the home. What is it in the power of home to do for
education? The answer is. What is it not in the power of the
home to do? The child is *'wax to receive and granite to retain.'*

32

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

It is the flexible period — the period of childhood. All inclinations,
tastes, dislikes, loves, hatreds, prejudices, customs, habits, passions,
are in a pliant condition and can be bent one way or the other. Suc-
cess is obtained only at the price of eternal and unwearying watch-
fulness. What a golden moment both for foe and friend of the
child! What study it calls for and what skill and what tact and
what forbearance, so that the golden moment may bear, in the
afterdays, harvests of blessings and good deeds. It is the crisis of
crises, and is pregnant with results that will abide, for itself and for
others, here and hereafter, be they baneful or not. And yet how
often the home, the nest where the child spends its first spring time,
the home where the parents' each fond endearment tries to tempt
their offspring to the skies, is invaded by enemies wilder than wild
beasts, whose inhuman task seems to be to hush or to mar all the
music of that sphere, which ought to be safe from all intrusion and
hostility! There is the domestic foe, which is born in the very
bosom of the family, and which, if not crushed, will assume giant
proportions and obliterate every vestige of home. The home has
but one end in view, and that is to shelter wife and husband who
love each other and whose sole aim is to bring up the child or the
children in the fear and love of God. The basis is the love of God.
The love of God is the beginning, the middle and the end of the
home. It is the home. As it is maintained — that love of God — so
is the home. Without it the home is a landscape without the sun ;
and a sunless landscape means the absence not only of beautifying
but of vivifying rays and heat. Let the sun of the love of God go
down on the family and lo the night starless and with no forerunner
of another dawn! Where all the conjugal virtues reign, there is
home, with all its colossal efficiency for the unbringing of the
child. What untold misery the dimming of these lights of home

HOME EDUCATION

ZZ

brings to mother and to father and to child no one but they them-
selves know, but how often that is the wretchedness of the situa-
tion is discovered in everyday experience, in the journals, in the
police and divorce courts. How far-reaching the consequences from
this source are, consequences involving the integrity of the indi-
vidual, the purity of society and uprightness in the state, is be-
yond the reach of calculation.

The only apology to offer for this brooding over horrors is the
frequency, the almost ubiquity of the peril. The monster stalks
up and down the earth, like its progenitor and inspirer in the days
of Job. There may be the yellow peril endangering the peace of
nations, and the press peril threatening conscience and purity, there
may be the pest and the plague peril decimating the races of men,
but these are almost blessings compared with the home peril, com-
pared with divorce, which destroys the family and flings out the
helpless child to drift at the mercy of every current and to be cast
upon any shore save that whereon light from the countenance of
God doth shine. Yes, therein lies its greatest menace. It strikes
at the education of the child. No education Is complete without
home education. No training can take its place, for it is a training
imperatively demanded by nature and ordered of God in the be-
ginning when He made man male and female and bade them in-
crease and multiply. There is a silent chord whenever the boy or
the girl has not been brought up under the influence of the family.

It is an old thesis in ethics that conjugal society was intended
by nature, and grew out of many exigencies, not least among which
is the claim of the child to be develoved throughout all its activity.
The same ethics holds that, while it is supremely necessary for the
race, it is not obligatory on any particular individual or on all of
the race. It is a society formed by a deliberate contract, which

34 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

claims what is essential to every other contract, and it adds the
proviso that when once entered this state and this compact are to
endure as long as both parties to it survive. By its very nature ft
forbids that separation which nullifies it altogether and which is
tantamount to the declaration that the contract was not perpetual
and indissoluble. In other words, nature proclaims with a loud,
imperious cry that divorce is a crime, heinous, and not for one
single second must its perpetration be tolerated. In fact, the mar-
riage contract, from the significance of the end which God pre-
scribed for it and nature determines and religion teaches and the
Sacrament ratifies, is inherently possessed of two essential qualities,
unity and indissolubility. It can exist — this partnership — only be-
tween one man and one woman. This unity is inseparably con-
nected with wedlock. The question of the tie being so forged by
nature that nature and nature's God vigorously protest against and
reprobate the rupture thereof, is the grave and all-consummg ques-
tion of our century. Not that there is very weighty and scientific
discussion. Somehow or other, the heart of man is on the side of
reason, that is, the hidden heart of man, and it may not be beyond
the truth to say that, as only the fool says in his heart, there is no
God, so only the corrupt, only the sentimental, only the fanatic,
only the debauchee, says in his heart that divorce is within the claim
of nature and nature's laws. In the savage breast there may exist
sentiments contrary to the perpetuity of the marriage contract, but
such sentiments are not based on enlightened reason, and are at-
tributable to a low moral culture, but not as low as that civilization
to which will surely descend the race which, while it fights against
the child pre-natally, asks for a license to break at will, or for very
trifling reasons, the union which made hirh and his spouse one in
the one flesh. Divorce must be anathematized for more than one

HOME EDUCATION

35

reason, it must be anathematized for the sake of the child. Not
merely for the sake of the integrity of the parents and the welfare
of the child, but because of the child, for the sake of society and
of the nation. This is patent when one reflects that the child of
to-day is the citizen of to-morrow. The child is the pivot of the
world, and on him and for him all human activities revolve, and the
home was made for him just as the nation was made for him.
What, then, is home education? It is the education of love, devo-
tion, conjugal fidelity and submission on the part of the parents.
It is the example of the parents. As the parents are so will the
home-training be. It may be argued that not infrequently out of
the best of homes come the worst of children. This is not on ac-
count but in spite of the home. The exceptions are many and piti-
ful; but the law is inexorable — that to the home belongs the initial
molding of the child. Nor can we state that a child ever loses en-
tirely the efforts of home influences, no matter how prodigal-like he
may run his career. Home is never utterly forgotten. Homing
pigeons, no matter at what time or in what clime or in what stress
of weather or how great the distance they may be loosed, make
straightway for their shelter. May it not be so for the young man
whose childhood was spent beneath the roof of a virtuous happy
home ? The storm may rage, the seas on which he voyages may be
far from the dwelling of his childhood, and yet in some God-given
moment he will catch a sight of it, and after one long swift flight
may find himself in his mother's arms again.

36 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY.

VII. — ^THE SCHOOL

When the child enters upon school life, it is launched on a sea,
the perils of which are numerous beyond all calculation. Still it is
a sea the journeying over which is inevitable and one that must
be traversed under sane and skilful pilotage. When we praise
education we are indirectly praising the schoolmaster, but, alas,
while we point to his efforts with pride and gratitude we are often
compelled to execrate him because of irremediable harm he, not
seldom, is responsible for.

Perhaps it were well to keep our encomiums until the child has
run its career, for it is only then that we find ourselves in a position
to know the value of the schoolmaster's work. That his vocation is
a very high one there is no gainsaying, but that he can wield his
influence as much for woe as for weal is equally incontrovertible.
It is no wonder that parents find that the first, and perhaps most
intricate problem, they have to solve with regard to their child is
the selection of a school. It takes all the home training which the
family can impart to stand the wear and stress of school influences.
The standard which guides them in their choice must be high
scholarship, high integrity and a companionship with the best
comrades. Even with all this secured there are hidden dangers
undreamed of, all which goes to show that the accountability which
devolves on fathers and mothers and guardians is very heavy at all
times and perhaps never more so than when the period arrives to
send the child to school.

It must be remembered that in these chapters pedagogy means
the development of the child physically, intellectually and morally;
nay, more, that moral culture is preferable in itself to every other.

THE SCHOOL 37

In the schoolroom it is possible to dwarf all development. It
stands to reason that the best school is that wherein physical, intel-
lectual and moral soundness are procurable. It stands to reason
that if the triple integrity which is so necessary to complete educa-
tion be in any way defective, in so much does the school fall away
from the standard. We are justified in demanding of the school-
master a guarantee that he is able to furnish these requisites. We
are justified in exacting that in the schoolroom nothing detri-
mental to body and mind and soul-growth be founded.

Pedagogy is undeserving of anything but censure if it is unable
to secure in reason the goal of all training, and it becomes more
than censurable if in any of its methods or principles it is destruc-
tive of what makes for the best in individuals and nations, that is
high scholarship and lofty character. It is impossible to exag-
gerate what may be called the essential meaning of the school.
Parents have every right to expect from those to whom they en-
trust their children characteristics of mind and characteristics of
character which will give them some assurance that they have not
delivered their boys and their girls to some devouring Moloch
eager for their defeat and destruction. What can be said of so
many things can be said of learning. There is education and educa-
tion, there are schools and schools. There are schools bad, good,
and indifferent, and schools imperfect and more or less perfect.
The absolutely perfect school, for obvious reasons, has never been,
does not, nor ever will exist. A professor here and there may
measure up to the standard, but all the professors never.

So it is with system and methods. Sometimes a reliable method
may be manipulated by a competent teacher, and, again, sometimes
a teacher will capitalize with a system that many have condemned
as not only useless but pernicious. A system may be defective, as

38 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

is undoubtedly a system which recognizes no training in morality.
A system may be unsafe, as it admittedly is when built up on a
basis subversive of all morality. A system may be so exclusive as
to be applicable only to those of supranormal ability, or so inclusive
as to become inert and superficial. It is these possibilities which
pedagogy must reckon with. They are contingencies which must
always be considered, otherwise they impede or wreck. One who
knows experimentally how hard and ungrateful a task education
is, will always remember how at unexpected moments and in unex-
pected ways the path was blocked, and so stubbornly, that further
progress was not possible, nay the delay seemed interminable, and
sometimes not only were there stoppage and delay but the em-
ployees had to be discharged and the whole machinery of the road
readjusted.

No school is to be taken on faith. It must be asked to show its
credentials, which can be nothing else but its achievements in the
past. If it is the maker of a history of boys and girls who have
become men and women cultured and refined and upright, then
there is patent a foundation of trustworthiness which may allay
some of the parental apprehension. The school is, after all, a tree
in more than one meaning, and as the tree is known by its fruits
so must the school be known by its results.

Alas! upon how many schools, even in these our times, has the
blight of the barren fig tree fallen? Not only the blight, but the
curse. The dead tree may be cut down and cast into the fire, for
at the worst it but cumbereth the ground. But the barren school-
house — barren of all healthy fruit, while taking in the life-giving
sources from the earth — arrests the progress thereof and, eliminat-
ing all vitality, holds out to the eyes of society stunted and rotten
fruit which must cumber the state until the grave opens, which

THE SCHOOL 39

must not only cumber the commonwealth, but must lie where it
falls, a stench in the nostrils of men, an eyesore as well, and a pest-
center whence swarm the germs of a thousand moral diseases
each worse than the other, dealing death in countless forms through-
out the whole social fabric.

Have there been such schools in the past? Are there such in the
present? We have but to look around to find how, though in life,
we are in the midst of death. The question is unnecessary. The
existence of these schools is as evident as the sun, and coextensive
with all civilized portions of the globe. The more the pity!
School life is a crisis. The parents are conscious of it and the
children discover it later and at times and not seldom regret the
moments — ^those so pliable moments lived under its influence.

The teacher is such a force behind the doors of the classroom.
He can do and undo so much. He has full sway in his little
kingdom. Unless under very favorable conditions he has but one end
in view, his own reputation. Reputation to him means dollars and
cents. Inspectors will inspect the surface of things only, they will
interrogate regarding reading, writing and arithmetic in all their
variations. The real life of the child is beyond their ken. If the
teacher is up and proves that the scholars are up to the standard,
the inspectors retire satisfied with themselves and with him. This
is the sum and substance of education as it is estimated the world
over.

Sometimes the deficiency of the school is supplied by the home,
before and after the sessions. But what is it where the home-
returning is not daily, but at the month's end or the sea-
son's end? Better drop the curtain. Pedagogy has a sublime
mission in the school, but infidelity to that mission will work
disaster immeasurable and the ruin, where pedagogics are imper-

40 CHRISTIAN PBDAGOGV

feet or incomplete, will mean entire wreckage — that is of mind,
and soul, and body.

The school life of a youth is a test of his character. He is tried
therein constantly and in many ways. His age is a formative one.
Senses and mind are "wax to receive and granite to retain." If
the school is a boarding school, the influences to which he is sub-
jected are as powerful as they are many. Pupils have returned
home after an absence of months, and sometimes of years, and how
keenly and anxiously they become the observed of their parents
and their friends and associates! They have been in a mill of
some kind, the whole world knows, and the results are being
spelled out. Some have been made men and women of a perfect
stature. Their manhood and their womanhood are sterling. Some
have lost everything they had which was worth the having. They
return to the bosom of the family weaklings in principle and habits.

This can happen in all institutions of learning no matter how
well equipped, but how much more surely will it happen where,
while character is being put to the test, there is not the refuge of
high moral culture. What will be the results in a college char-
tered by government, in which a testamentary proviso is admitted
to probate, that "no ecclesiastic, missionary or minister of any
sect whatever is to have any connection with the institution"?

What is to be the destiny of a nation, of a democracy, that by an
edict not only paralyzes, but makes impossible every attempt to
irradiate instruction by the torch of religion? What indeed?
St. Paul (Rom. i) sums up the consequences of changing the glory
of the incorruptible God. History repeats itself and will repeat
itself always.

THE HUMAN SOUL 41

VIII. — THE HUMAN SOUL

The pedagogical system which excludes the Christian view of
the human soul is incomplete, and in so much not salutary; and
because the incompleteness involves what is paramount in the
child, it becomes in its entirety unsafe, and so defeats its own end.
The desire of novelty has always been a mental disease of the
race, and has led to disorder and disorganization in the intellectual
zone. That a thing is new is no guarantee of its truth, neither is
it a proof of its falsity. It were a matter worth the labor to specu-
late how far fundamental truth would be advanced to-day, if the
efforts of men had been in the direction of conserving and strength-
ening it rather than in the direction of substituting untried ideas
in its place. If the intellectual struggle had been on the side of
well proven principles, how clear the mental atmosphere would
be to-day and how serene the heights on which inexpugnable verity
has the right of unfurling its standards. If love of truth, in
other words, instead of love of novelty, or the desire of being in
the opposition, had been the motive power since the dawn of every-
thing, how widespread, how solid, how secure would be the throne
from which that same truth would dispense its saving influence
to all.

So common has the concupiscence of eye and ear and mind
made this itching for novelty that the time has come when the
man the most original, is the man who plants his feet stubbornly
on the side of truths which for so many centuries satisfied so
many minds, and now give solace to multitudes who in matters
of general concern adhere faithfully to the doctrines of other
and older generations. How many theories have been advanced
regarding the soul of man! They have no standing among those

44

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

who reason sanely and without passion or prejudice. Not one of
those theories but uncrowns humanity. Not one of them is worthy
of the normal aspirations of the normal man. Not one of them
illumines or encourages or uplifts. Not one of them dignifies man.

Whence comes the intense eagerness to strip man of what en-
nobles him and elevates his whole nature? Whence this frenzied
attempting to blot out the only things that make life here on earth
worth the living? What is the race if there be no God? What is
man if his soul is a perishable thing? What is life if there is no
religion? It would seem, were it so there were no God, no re-
ligion, no immortality, that he should be hailed as a benefactor
without parallel who in some magic way were potent enough to
hypnotize the world into the belief that they were not brain-
figments but substantial realities. This apparent hatred of what is
man's richest possession, this persistent determination to steal from
him what is better than all that has been proclaimed as substitutes,
springs from some agency inaccessible, but real, that is inspired
with no love for man, but with a hostility determined upon the
destruction or the squandering of what is his best inheritance.

If the idea of God has distilled through the alembic of fancy
and distorted logic into a concept which is neither God nor man,
is it any wonder that the human soul has been so bespattered by
the sprinklings from minds gyrating convulsively through intel-
lectual spaces that we are unable to recognize it either as human
or spiritual? All the efforts of man's ingenuity should be in the
direction rather of elevation than degradation. This is in nowise
true of the treatment which the noblest part of man has received
at the hands of soi-disant philosophers. From the beginning it
was considered a spark divine. It is not spirit but matter, say some.
It is an entity distinct from man's body, but still material, say

THE HUMAN SOUL 43

others. It is a part of the nervous system, proclaim others again —
a superior nervous activity of which the functions are sensibiHty,
"motricity," vitaHty, locomotion, intelligence. The brain alone
thinks, but the medulla oblongata feels. The soul circulates
through man as the blood does.

These and many other views are promulgated by the old world
and new world propagandas, and by their theories they are dif-
ferentiated and classified as dynamic, mechanical, geometrical and
atomic sensists or materialists. One is tempted to ask what has the
poor human soul done to men that they are so eager to drag it
down from its high estate. Why are they so envenomed against
themselves that they prefer to herd it with the beasts of the field
rather than consort with angels?

The soul — its nature and existence — is tossed upon an intel-
lectual sea, hither driven and thither driven, by contending winds
of doctrine. This is certainly to be deplored, nor is there any-
thing more deplorable in the whole experience of the soul than
this, that the spark be stripped of its divinity and then extin-
guished altogether. Yes, there is one calamity more appalling for
the human soul, the calamity which condemns it to death and
despair eternal. If the soul is a perishable thing, then let pedagogy
de-christianize itself and develop faculties with a temporal view
and for temporal use only, let the mind grasp worlds of thought
&nd the senses enjoy without let or hindrance every pleasure
within ken, let the wheels of education revolve tirelessly in the
production of weaklings and degenerates for the destruction of
the race, then let there be two worlds only — the world of mind
and the world of sense — and let the world of morality fall to
pieces and leave not a wrack behind. Is this man, is this man-
hood? Is this Hfe? Is this living?

44 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

There is another human soul — the soul which God made and is
making, or rather creating, whenever a man is conceived, the soul
which man makes so many incomprehensible attempts to unmake.
It is the soul according to reason, according to revelation, ac-
cording to faith — it is the soul which is a possession to be proud
of, a soul that dignifies, ennobles, regalizes. It is the soul which
all understand, it is not that confection of unreason which is not
intelligible and which uncrowns and degrades and destroys now
and always. It is the solution of all perplexing riddles — this soul.
It has been involved in all the great cataclysms of history. It
explains, in its marvelous liberty, the primeval prevarication, it
makes manifest the dealings of Providence with the world, it helps
toward the explanation of the redemption, of the Church with all
its Sacraments and its splendid ritual. Had there been no human
soul as the Church expounds it to all her children, there would have
been no Eden, no Christ, no Church.

Just as surely as God made the world and everything in it for
I lis own glory, so has He created every human soul to glorify
Ilim in an ever-abiding city in strains which can come only from
lips spiritual and immortal. The youngest Sunday-school child is
taught this sublime fact, and the truest pedagogy is the pedagogy
which, no matter how it trains or where it leads, illuminates all
the windings by the light which flashes from this great truth, this
undeniable fact. Open the first page of the Catechism, and, lo!
how it all takes possession of the faculties of man. It is the pre-
liminary of salvation, it is the key of heaven. Learn it not, and
God will never be known. Learn it and keep it — that is, let it seize
upon the mind and heart — and then God will be known and pos-
sessed for always. That first page bears repetition.

Who made the world? Who is God? What is man? Why

THE HUMAN SOUL 45

did God make you? Wjhat must we do to save our souls? How
shall we know the things we are to believe? These are sweeping
questions, these are insistent questions. They have been asked
since the beginning of the race, and they will be asked unto the
end. What are the answers?

God made the world. God is the Creator of heaven and earth.
Man is a creature composed of body and soul and made to the
image and likeness of God. God made men to know Him, to love
Him and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him
forever in heaven. To save our souls we must worship God by
faith, hope and charity, that we must believe in Him, hope in
Him and love Him with all our heart. We shall know the things
which we are to believe from the Catholic Church, through which
God speaks to us.

These few lines teach what is essential regarding the origin,
the mission, the destiny of the human soul. There is nothing worth
so much to a man as is his soul. It is the spiritual substance from
which flow to his whole being life, sense, intelligence and will.
It is susceptible of development, of a development worthy of its
exalted nature. It can not die. It can not be ignored. Pedagogy
must state the problems of the soul first, their solution and its
training must be found in all pedagogical plans. No education
scheme is complete without this. The importance of the soul has
held its place from the first. No theories have ever negatived
logically what faith teaches concerning it. All that is demanded
is that the claims of immortality be not disregarded. They are
throned high, they must be sustained there. Other views of
pedagogy are inadequate, and the systems which emanate thence
can not be relied upon, and certainly merit not approval, but
condemnation.

46 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

IX. THE HUMAN BODY

Systems of pedagogy are colored by the principles which they
propound and defend, and they are no stronger nor weaker than
the axioms upon which their superstructures are reared. If they
are addressed to the whole individual, they put on at least one
indispensable quality, the quality of universality. If they are con-
cerned with this or that faculty only, they have the demerit of
incompleteness and in so much are defective. If they exaggerate one
point of education unduly, then, in proportion, they defeat their
own ends and are to be blamed and rejected. This is especially
evident when the human body is under discussion — the human
body about which there are maxims many and divers. If properly
co-related these conduce to proper development ; if not, their growth
is either stunted or in some other way abnormal.

In these chapters the view is constantly kept in mind that in educa-
tion Christianity throws light on every ramification of pedagogy —
it conveys direction for the upbringing of the child in all its con-
stituent elements. It has a care for the soul and also for the body.
Its attitude, since the very beginning, has confronted all the ages,
and to-day as in the earliest times that attitude has not only not
changed, but has become more determined. The Master yearned
that little children should be suffered to come unto Him, and to
His Church He hath bequeathed the same longing. He has made
it mandatory. How wilful has been, and how bewildering the
groping of the young who have not been suffered to come unto
Him! Into how many far-off countries have they not wandered,
and how distant from ideals have the countless children of these
children not been banished! It is this straying which has written
the most tristful pages of history ; which has in this twentieth century

THE HUMAN BODY

47

left upon our generation the legacy of irreligion and iniquity, under
which it groans. Hence is it, why pedagogy, unto which Christianity
has not been injected, is not only anemic, but diseased and pesti-
ferous.

The philosophers from Thales to Haeckel, have theorized about
the body of man. The teaching of Christianity has been warred
against always, and will be until the end. In fact the world is
divided into two camps, the camps of the Church and of the
world. By the world is meant the unadulterated outcome in thought
of what may be termed the human spirit left to itself, which an
eminent writer has described in words as simple as they are true.

"It is necessary that I should ask my readers to remember what
theology teaches them, that there is such a thing as a definite human
spirit, the spirit of man, and of fallen man, and that it has ways
and operations of its own which exercise a very material influence
over the whole of our spiritual life. What is usually taught about
it may be briefly stated as follows: There are three spirits with
which we have to do, the divine, the diabolical, and the human.
This last is a distinct and definite spirit of itself, and consists of
the inclinations of our fallen nature when not allied to either of
the other spirits. So that the mischief that it causes in the spirit*
ual life is chiefly of a negative character. It is known by its al-
ways gravitating, independently of any satanical impulsion, to
peace, comfort, ease, liberty and making ample provision for the
body."

This is a prevalent spirit, and it is a hard spirit to defeat. It
controls not only habits, but views, and is at tlie bottom, but not
always innocently, of scientific moralizing. What are the thoughts
uppermost in the mental activity of many of the race to-day
regarding the body? By some it is considered as the highest

48 . CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

visible expression of man. Behind it there is an energy which
displays itself in marvelous concepts, judgments and reasonings^
which, however, are only more refined results of corporal sensations.

Thinking is but higher feeling — Genius, no matter what its ac-
complishments and discoveries, is only privileged matter with a
more perfect power of refining consciousness, personally. What
are all these things? Only an impulse stirring in the aggregate of
molecules which make up the body. The man is a body only — no
more. From head to foot and from eye to soul, there is nothing
in him but extended cohesive, . gravitating matter. Man is but a
machine — very perfect, very wonderful, but a machine. He is, as
is a music-box, complicated, automatic.

This is a view upheld not by men who lived so long ago that
their experience of the race was short and limited, but by men who
have, in their endeavor to solve problems which puzzle them and
annoy, not only a to-day or a yesterday to consult, but are heirs of the
results of the conscientious thinkers of all peoples and of all climes
and of all ages. They have placed their kind, that is their fellow-
man, in their retorts and have drenched him with their chemicals,
drenched him soul and body, and lo the residuum, dust and ashes.
That is their formula. That is all that man has been, is, and will be.
Man from dust came, and unto ashes will return.

Scriptural this, it is true, but it was not spoken of the soul and,
because it was not, the higher view must be taken, otherwise peda-
agogy is unfit for the task it assumes to perform. Man is not body
only, but soul as well. Soul and body are inseparable companions
during this pilgrimage. The life journey ended, then the parting
of the ways is reached. "The silver cord shall be broken and the
golden fillet shrunk back, and the pitcher be crushed at the fountain,
and the dust return into its earth from whence it was, and the spirit

THE HUMAN BODY 49

return to God who gave it" (Eel. xii). The first man came from
the hands of God, immortal not only as to soul but also in body.
"God created man incorruptible" (Wisd. ii). Adam's immortality
of the body was not a consequence of his nature. It was a gratuitous
gift of God. Adam sinned and forfeited for himself and for the
entire human race, not only the supernatural, but the preternatural
gifts which he enjoyed, and among his preternatural gifts was
bodily immortality. This is Christian teaching, but it conveys
another truth. "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and in the
last day, I will rise out of the earth and I shall be clothed again
with my skin and in my flesh I shall see God — whom I myself
shall see and my eyes shall behold and not another, and this my
hope is laid up in my bosom" (Job xix).

In this way does faith complete the story of man's body. In its
adherence to this doctrine and in the logical inferences therefrom
must all physical culture and all hygiene be tested. When this
teaching is respected there will be very little room for apprehension.
Where it is not the underlying principle of any science which has the
human body directly or indirectly for treatment, then the human
body is not respected and there is no reverence for man, his origin
is disregarded, and his destiny hangs trembling in the balance. Man's
body and soul are intimate fellow travelers here below. The in-
timacy is of the closest. The soul can harm the body and the
body can betray the soul. There will come moments when the
eternal destiny of each will depend on the surrender or the victory
of the other. If the soul is saved then it will be well for the body
too. How simple the Catechism statement that we must take more
care of the soul than of the body. The body has a right to rebel
if the soul conceives thoughts or desires which are below the
dignity of the one and compels unworthy action from the other.

50 . CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

The soul is in its own privilege when it declares to the senses,
no matter how imperiously, the law of so far and no farther.

It may come to such a pass, such is the paramountcy of the moral
order, that the soul will be obligated to consent to a severance of the
tie that binds it to the body rather than comply with its imper-
ative demands. "If thy hand or thy foot scandalize thee,
cut it off and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into
life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet to be
cast into everlasting fire" (Matt, xviii).

These are hard words, but they are uttered by divine wisdom
and apply to all who minister unto the growth of the human body.
They are words uttered before the foundations of the world and
they abide forever. They have never been disproved. They do
not stand in the way of wholesome bodily development. They do
not contradict public or personal or domestic hygiene.. They do
not impede healthy exercise. They do not invade the field of whole-
some athletics. They are not in the way of general sanitary im-
provement. They approve of everything that helps to make life,
physical life, a benefaction and a pleasure. They are not enemies
of pathology, therapeutics or medicine or surgery. If followed
the body will be a storehouse of healthful delight and a helpful
companion to the soul. They advocate a sound body but they
authoritatively insist on the sound mind. They are opposed to no
advance of science, and they interfere only when science is pur-
suing false lights, only when science becomes detrimental to its
own highest and truest interests. They make for all that is worth
the making for. They dignify the senses and they prepare the
body for the ravishing consummation of the hereafter when that
whSch "is sown in corruption shall rise in incorruption, is sown in
dishonor shall rise in glory, is sown in weakness shall rise in power"
(I Cor. XV, 42, 43). In these truths lie the dignity of man's body
and the dignity of the pedagogues who worthily care for it.

THE SENSES. 51

X. THE SENSES

The senses are the doors and the windows of the human soul.
Through them the soul looks out on the exterior world and through
them, also, it receives its impressions of all that makes up the
visible universe. It is of moment that a clear view should be had,
and of moment too, that all that enters should be questioned. The
five senses are ever alert and inquisitive, and much need, indeed,
is there of a supersense to stand sentinel and control every move-
ment, every tendency, and every impulse. This is simply stating what
has been inculcated by every moralist worthy the name, from the
first unto the latest. It would be the duty of this supervisor to
distinguish between the weak and the strong, between what is
fit for the weak and fit for the strong, between the partakers of
strong meat and the partakers of milk, because. ."Strong meat is
for the perfect, for them who by custom have their senses exercised
to the discerning of good and evil'' (Heb. v, 14). By custom the
senses may become evil or may become good. This is proved by
experience and is emphasized by that oldest monitor of the race,
Holy Writ.

We are toUd of the eye made evil, and of the ear uncir-
cumcised, of the taste of death, of the savor the Lord will not
smell, of the flesh that touches any unclean thing. St. Paul tells
us of the diversities of graces and diversities of operations, and
how all these things are and the same spirit worketh, explaining
everything by the unity of the members and the body and exact-
ing from every sense a function of honor, all working for bettef
gifts and in a more excellent way (I Cor. xii). In all he says there
is suggested a higher training for the senses, a more excellent

52 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

way. For there is an eye that sees not, and an ear that hears not,
and a nose that smells not, and a taste that tastes not, and a touch
that kills. Better have none of these senses than let them see,
and hear, and smell, and touch, and taste the things they should not.
Here Christian pedagogy has the lines of its task clearly marked
out.

It is a far cry from the revelers who sang: "There is no going
back of our end for it is fast sealed and no man returneth. Come,
therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are present and
let us speedily use the creatures as in youth, let us fill ourselves
with costly wine and ointments, and let not the flower of the time
pass by us, let us crown ourselves with roses before they be withered,
let no meadow escape our riot, let none of us go without his part
in luxury" (Wisd. ii, 5-9). Yes, a far cry, indeed, it is from the
revelry of these sensualists to the exclamation of St. Paul (I Cor. vi,
13-20) : "Meat for the belly and the belly for the meats, but God
shall destroy both it and them, but the body is not for fornication,
but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Know you not that
your bodies are the members of Christ. Or know you not that
your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you,
whom you have from God and you are not your own? For
you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in
your body." This is the Christian pedagogy of the senses. Its
mission is to teach the senses that they are not to be allowed to
work their own sweet will, that they are to be brought under sub-
jection. This is certainly making for the creation of a sound mind
in a sound body. This certainly is a doctrine in which one "can
bathe and be clean and slake his drought." Any other doctrine
is the doctrine of death. Sense-training is by all means commend-
able.

THE SENSES

53

The use of the senses and their best use is commendable, but
only their best use. All that has been said about the human
body is true of the senses. In fact only by regulating the senses
do we control the body. This is an irksome teaching for an age
in which luxury is the lap in which so many love to repose. The
luxury of the age is appalling. The sins of to-day as the sins of
days long ago dead, of days never illumined by the sun of justice,
are sins of the senses. Two deities are in opposition, and both are
longing for supremacy over the race — the God of Chastity and the
god of lust. Money is the almighty thing it is simply because
of the pleasures it can command. We know whither the paths
of Christianity lead, but we know not into what abysses the in-
dividual and the family and the nation fall when the primrose road
of dalliance is taken. There is a cry of fear on the trembling
lips of rulers. There is an aching apprehension in many hearts.

Now and then some watcher on the tower awakens the stillness
of the night with accents of warning, but there is only one panacea
for the hordes of ills which hover around the national existence —
the panacea of a pedagogy fed upon and stimulated by the doc-
trines of Christ. Yes, the senses must be educated, but the training
thereof must be within the limits of safety. Let them exult in
their wonderful powers of achievement, but let them stop short
of disaster and death. Teach the eye to see clearly and far, in-
tensify by strongest lens its gift of vision, let it travel from star
to star, from depth to depth. Widen its prospects with all the aids
of science but let it learn that there are spots of darkness, upon
which it is dangerous to linger. Let the ear be the receptacle of
all the sounds that gladden and ravish, but let it deafen itself when
notes of peril are sounded. Regale the nostrils with fragrance,
but bid them turn away in disdain and fear when under the rose

54 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

there hides the venomous adder. Cultivate the palate, but set
bounds to unwise caprice and unsafe excess. Render exquisite the
touch, attune it to finest sensations, but cry halt when the next
enjoyment means sin and degradation.

Through the senses, which are the portals of the soul, it is
so easy for death and degradation to ascend. Trifle not with
peril. Give no tongue to mistaken maxims. There are objects the
eye must not look upon. There are tones the ear must not hearken
to. There are perfumes which are deadly — perfumes which are
only a mask for disease and death. There are meats which are only
carrion. There are drinks which are poison only. There are sen-
sations which are not life-pulses but death-throes. For these
there is only one law. Beware!

The activity of the senses restrained within these frontiers is
wholesome. Yet there are so many who clamor for untrammeled
liberty for the senses. It is not likely they are hungry, for their
appetite is sicklied o'er with the lurid cast of lust. The history^
of such degenerates is found in the records of hospitals, and their
finale is the dissecting table or premature grave. But, they say —
why can't the eye be like the sun and look upon what it pleases?
The sun has never yet shone upon a shadow. Their argument is
that to the pure all things are pure. To the pure, yes. But what
mortal is pure in the sense that he enjoys absolute immunity from
the danger which assails the soul through the senses? No one.
Not even the purity of ignorance renders a man immune. If there
ever was a devil that roams roaring among the senses that demon
is the devil of lust. There is a volcano in every human breast, and
what man has come to the closing scene with the announcement
on his lips that the inner fires have never stirred and that his life
has been a career as quiet as "a painted ship upon a painted ocean ?"

THE SENSES 55

Life is a sea, and there has been no sea without a ripple — a wavelet,
or a storm. There have been few chaste generations, but there have
been adulterous generations a many, looking for a sign. What
does chastity mean — virginal or conjugal? It means castigation.
It means mortification, restraint. It means war against the senses.
It means purgation, elimination even in thought. It means eternal
vigilance. The three graces of Christianity are Faith, Charity,
Chastity. They are as delicate as they are beautiful. A thought
can kill any one of them. A look can kill Chastity. The maid of
honor to Chastity is Modesty. Modesty, again, means restriction.
Modesty is the veil which Chastity wears. It conceals the individual
from others, it hides the individual from himself. So men and
women walk through life clothed and crowned with purity. Purity
is a gem which the angels look upon with holy envy. They have
never had to make the fight, those angels; the terrible, never-
ceasing fight against the flesh. All this the pedagogy of the senses,
as it appears to the Christian eye, all this the pedagogy of the
senses amounts to. What unspeakable glory to contribute toward
the formation of chaste generations of men and women. Chastity,
in its integrity, was not known to the world at large before the
advent of Christ. What a reformation, what an educative power
it has I How it can make a murky world blossom like Carmel
where the lilies blow! What self conquest it imposes! How it
elevates and transforms the individual man and woman ! How the
family glows with its luster! How the nations would gleam with
its brightness! It makes men and women of true manhood and
sterling womanhood. It makes peaceful homes and glorious peoples.
It makes heroes and heroines. It makes soldiers sleepless at their
post and undismayed in the encounter. It spiritualizes matter
which it ripens unto resurrection. It makes the human divine.

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XI. THE BRAIN AND THE IMAGINATION

The tendency to blame others for one's shortcomings is as nat-
ural as it is prevalent. That it is prevalent "goes v^ithout saying."
That is natural vi^hich is uncontrovertibly apparent wherever
tlie individuals of a species exist. In fact, its prevalence is a
proof of its being typical. It is in the constitution, in the
characteristics of man, to seek rather elsewhere than in one's
self for the cause of all misdemeanor. This proclivity began
with the first progenitors. It was well accentuated In both
Adam and Eve. All we know about them before their fall,
while they still resided in the paradise of pleasure, is that they
were both in a different fashion brought into being and com-
manded not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil, and that the twain did eat. "And when they heard the
voice of the Lord God walking in Paradise at the afternoon
air" and obeyed His summons, Adam said: "The woman whom
thou gavest me to be my companion gave me of the tree and I
did eat." "And the Lord said to the woman: Why hast thou
done this? And she answered: The serpent deceived me and
I did eat" (Gen. ill). There was more subtlety in Adam's
reply than In that of Eve. Adam threw the blame not alone
on his consort but by implication on his Maker, for the fault
was not that of his companion only but of the companion whom
"God" had given him.

This tossing of the shuttle of human responsibility has be-
come a game in which many adepts have been discovered in all
the generations of men. The cry has been that it is not in our-
selves but in our fellows that we have been underlings and the
accusation has not respected even the August Majesty of God
Himself. Presumably, by a law of heredity, Cain after having

THE BRAIN AND THE IMAGINATION 57

committed the iniquity "greater than that I may deserve par-
don," first denied and then blamed "the Lord for having had
respect to Abel and his offerings but to Cain and his offer-
ings he had no respect." Nay, he went further. He laid down
a principle that each man should look out only for himself —
"am I my brother's keeper?" Something leavened the human
mass viciously and swiftly from the very inception of things.
What is found in individuals is found in groups and what is
found in a generation or in generations, is also discovered in
centuries and in ages. It is noticeable that one age will attribute
its defects to a "throwback" to some previous cycle, but what-
ever is a crown and a glory it will claim not so much as an in-
heiitance, but as a creation of its own omnipotence.

The twentieth century has not as yet reached its "teens."
How often does it look back with gratitude or even recogni-
tion to the nineteenth age of this modern world? Is this pride
or vanity? Hardly pride, because it is the boast of pride that
it never stoops to the little or the mean. Pride holds in con-
tempt the opinions of others. Vanity, on the other hand, aims
at attracting attention, in divers ways, to itself. It would seem,
then, that this young age of the Christian era is aggressively vain,
and so aggressively vain that it holds In contempt the years
that have gone by. It is a vain, selfish period through which we
are passing, and educators undertake a very heavy task when
they propose to remove from mind, brain and senses the dele-
terious consequences of these times, which In so many instances
render youth refractory and rebellious to all authority and elders
prone to connive and weak to resist. There is something be-
yond doubt rotten in Denmark and the rottenness is the effect of
example or heredity, call it what one pleases.

58 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY.

The mistake to be avoided is to think that nowhere under
the sun is there estabUshed an agency powerful enough to com-
pete with the problem or to go any distance toward weakening,
if not altogether overthrowing, the Welt-Geist. This world-
spirit, world-tendency, world-influence is not a nonentity. It
is as real as the air we breathe. Rather it is the atmosphere in
which the mind has its being and lives and moves. To remove
it is not at all possible. But it may be neutralized.

There are, most undoubtedly, re-agents somewhere. But
where? Ah, there is just the duty of pedagogy. If pedagogy
without Christianity can find and apply them, well and good.
But if it can not, then let it try the reactionary influences of re-
ligion. They have been tried and thus far these have harvested
the largest measure of success. Negative pedagogy has been
tried and, as with all negative things, there has been, at the
best, only negative results. Nor should there be much of an out-
cry if there was a result purely negative. Unfortunately the
results have been perniciously positive. So much so, that over
the length and breadth of this land there has been ululation, there
has been a demand that some element be introduced into the
systems of education which boards and principals uphold and
municipalities support, some force to roll back the waves of
Socialism and the irreverence which seem to be sweeping over
the land.

These are the thoughts which always come to the surface
whenever one reflects on the existing condition of things and
is irresistibly compelled to lay everything that is wrong or dis-
turbing finally at the door of naturalism or materialism, in their
thousand and one kinds, which form the basis of so much of
the pedagogy of the day. These theories control much of the

THE BRAIN AND THE IMAGINATION 59

political activity and much of the civic energy of the age. In
a word, wittingly or unwittingly, they exert an influence which
projects itself into almost every sphere of modern life. Hence
the necessity of Christianizing so many of the actual methods.
What becomes of the human body and of the senses and of the
brain, in fact of all the operations of the individual, if the moral
order is not emphasized? What moral order is there possible
without religion, and what religion is there without God, and
what God is the God alone to be adored, if not the God revealed
by and in the Christ?

Psychology and all the "ologies" have no salutary trend save
while they are consonant with human experience and at the same
time safeguard the old beliefs. How vain to discuss any faculty
of man if that faculty has only a commercial value commen-
surate with the debit and credit of this mundane sphere? What
will sense-training compass save a deeper wallowing in the sen-
sual sty if the senses alone are the horizon of man's hopes and
man's ambition? No! Man, soul and body, must be steered
in the direction pointed out by his origin and his destiny, otherwise
all his splendid vitality is exhausted in vain.

What was said about man's body and senses clearly holds
when our examination goes beyond the exterior and penetrates
the wonderful interior mechanism, of which all that the eye
beholds in him is only a complexity of instruments. Anatomy
in laying bare the formation, or rather the structure, of the
brain has simply made greater the wonder why the old truth
that a divinity hedges in everything in man has not extruded
every other claimant anent the origin of all things. The con-
templation of the several portions, or, if you will, organs of the
brain, of the medulla oblongata, from which proceed, besides

6o < CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

other nerves, those dominating heart and lung action; the pom
varolii and the cerebrum or large brain, with the clearly differ-
entiated parts which are situated at its base — the corpus striatum,
the optic thalamus, the corpus callosum and the corpora quad-
rigemina — the soft pulpy substance of mixed gray and white
matter, part cells, part fibres, the contemplation of all this con-
vinces the observer that a more cunning hand than a blind
natural force has been at work.

This hidden organ is the purveyor to all the senses in their busy
activity and the instrument which helps the intelligence, or rather
15 the servant of the mind in all its delicate operations. Brain
and senses belong to the family, if the expression may be used, of
matter. They are of matter only, and their operations and their
existence do not rise above their source. The function of the
senses is to take in the outside world and transmit the impression
thereof to the brain, whose office is to fashion images of the
things presented.

There is a chasm, however, between the finest achievement of
brain and the lowest or simplest product of mind. The bridging
over of this chasm has occupied the attention and the energy of
the schools since earliest times. The schoolmen think they have
discovered the secret, they think they have come upon "the magic
transformer who is able to elevate phantasms from the category of
n^atter to that of pure ideas. This faculty they call the acting in-
tellect; a real magician which possesses the wonderful secret of
stripping sensible species of their material conditions, of smoothing
every roughness which prevents them from coming into contact
with the pure understanding and transforms the gross food of the
sensitive faculties into the purest ambrosia, fit to be served at the
repast of spirits" (Balmez).

THE BRAIN AND THE IMAGINATION 6i

XII. THE BRAIN AND THE IMAGINATION
{Continued.)

It can hardly be called into question that in these pages there
is little, if any, need of technical definition or scientific description.
These may be had without much labor on reference to the many
specialist books which are so constantly appearing on the literary
counter. The brain fulfils many offices, but its chief est function
would seem to be that of imagination, which is a perceptive and
picture making faculty. As a soul power it receives from the sen-
sations of the external senses the resemblances or forms of ob-
jects. It retains these likenesses, and when the objects which
gave rise to them are absent or passed away it is able to recall
them without any objective assistance from outside existences.
In man it goes a step farther and forms other images by the aid
of those it already possesses. Even in the days of the scholastics
this faculty was thoroughly studied and conclusions reached which
are admitted by the scientific schools of to-day, though there is
such a confusion of terms that any effort to clarify and distinguish
becomes weariness and vexation of spirit. The older men, in their
own transparent way, and in a more intelligible tongue, spoke of
imagination and of fancy in its sensuous, in its productive and its
esthetic relations, and gave a very satisfactory answer to the ques-
tion:

"Tell me where is fancy bred —
Or in the heart or in the head?"

And they understood as well as these youngest children of time

that

"The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact."

62 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

They insisted that it was to rank among the sensitive powers of
man; that though animated by a spiritual soul, it was at best a
faculty organic in its operations and was not a participant but an
auxiliary in all intellectual activity. This was defended stoutly
as far back as the time of Aristotle and by Aristotle himself. It
was an organ, and therefore living matter peculiarly fashioned
and designed for a special office. It was the last administrator to
the intelligence and stood ready to assist in the vestibule of spiritu-
ality. Being organic, it was found wherever sensation existed,
and was as necessary to the animal as it was to man.

The world has made many revolutions around the sun since
those days, but the question arises, has their opinion or their state-
ment been successfully controverted? It would appear not. The
imagination is not the least among God's gifts to man. Like all
other gifts, it can be misused by man's perversity. Lent to him as
a blessing, it is in his power to warp it into a curse. In a measure,
like purely material functions, it is uncontrollable, and in so far
can be curbed by no laws. But in a very large measure it is sus-
ceptible of direction and under the command of the will the dan-
gers to which it subjects its possessor can be very materially les-
sened. Man without imagination would be cut off from innumer-
able advantages — advantages which make for his material and so-
cial and spiritual welfare. It is a power which enables him to
largely and vividly realize his environment, and which places him
in very close communication with his fellows. A man without im-
agination only half enjoys life. It would be better to say that a
man without imagination only half understands life.

By the man without imagination is meant the man who has
just enough of the gift to put him in superficial contact with the
outer universe, who has just enough of it to make him competent

THE BRAIN AND THE IMAGINATION 63

to transact the ordinary business of living, to eat and drink, and
in a half way to be merry, to coin and hoard money. He is a man
for whom poetry is simply a more labored prose, for whom music
is only a succession of sounds, for whom a primrose is a yellow
flower and no more, for whom the pain of his fellowman is only
pain and not suffering and not agony, for whom life is business
and nothing else. He is a man who cannot understand childhood
nor youth nor the joys of either. He measures all things by
himself. He can not enter into the feelings of others. He is
without sympathy. He has reduced all living and all life to mathe-
matical rules. He is a machine— an automaton only. He is not
without vices, but his vices have no excuse, no palliative. He is
heartless.

It would be hard to understand the significance he attaches to
such terms as misery, pity, consideration, charity. He never be-
comes the victim of exaggerated or any other kind of altruism.
Civic duties have no charm for him. His domestic relations are
all matter-of-fact transactions. He easily degenerates into the
heartless, systematic tyrant. He is wrapped up in the mantle of
his own exceptional solitariness. Very little sympathy goes out to
him while he lives and he goes to his grave unregretted and his
memory is most decidedly not kept green.

There have been such men. They have traveled along this pil-
grimage of earth, and they have had eyes and ears, and verily
they have neither seen nor have they heard. For them the world
and everything in it, save themselves, has been a wonder and a
sad surprise.

The man with imagination is a character just the reverse, and
the contrast is in proportion to the power of his picture-making

64 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

faculty. If sometimes he has been misunderstood, he has always
understood.

It may be contended that the condition of the former is prefer-
able. Let every one abound in his own opinion.

In the matter of the imagination pedagogy has a task which
bristles with difficulties. In its aim to develop it must assume
also the responsibility of guiding the imagination. Experience
guarantees that it is possible for educational training to perform
two offices. Where there is little imagination it can add some-
thing to that little ; where the imagination is too vigorous it can di-
rect and curb and elevate and chasten. Many methods for com-
passing this end have been advanced. Some of them are too ad-
vanced, some are impotent altogether, some seem to fit the pur-
pose for which they are intended, and all of them depend on the
efficiency of those entrusted with their application. The imagina-
tion can not be commanded in the same way or as immediately
as the senses or the intelligence. Moreover, it has a way of com-
bining and analyzing the images which are collected within it
which may be beyond the reach of control. That it is a menace
to peace of mind and whiteness of conscience nobody for one in-
stant doubts. What can be done for it is to keep it aloof from
dangerous influences. There are certain pictures which if we can
not stop it from reproducing, we can at least prevent it from har-
boring or caressing.

It is as sensitive — is the imagination — as a photographic plate.
It is as instantaneous. There are certain roads down which we
must not allow it to journey. There is no prospect, no matter how
drear, which it has not the skill to light up and color. There is
no temptation to any soul-defilement which it has not the trick
to intensify and render more hypnotic. It can throw the most

A

THE BRAIN AND THE IMAGINATION 65

bewitching mask over almost any kind of corruption. It can
beguile old age almost as fascinatingly as it can youth. It is one
of the most dangerous inmates of our soul's household ; but, thank
God, we have it within the power of our will to bid it down.
We must tame it. It is outside of all reason to feed it as the senses
would demand or an easy nature would desire. It is midway be-
tween the outer senses and the inmost intellect, and both can
arouse it and lash it into a fury in comparison with which a ty-
phoon is a calm. Therefore must the mind refuse it certain
thoughts and the senses shut out certain objects.

A multitude of sights and sounds and sensations should be cur-
tained away from the imagination. Among its most formidable
enemies as well as in the ranks of its most insinuating, aye, and in-
spiring friends, are books and conversation. To keep it alive
books must be read and intercourse with helpful minds enjoyed.
Yet there are books which will feed it unto too much life and
jeopardize its welfare. These are books against faith and against
morality. The old law holds for this faculty as it does for every
other. It must not be "led into temptation" and it must be "de-
livered from evil/' Nothing elevates it, nothing chastens it so
much as the principles of religion. Nothing keeps it within bounds
so strongly as the precepts of Christianity. The world is full of
dangers for it. So is all the flesh of which it is a part. For the
imagination especially the damnable maxim to be execrated is the
maxim that to the pure all is pure. Purity is a splendid preroga-
tive, but it does not make us immune.

66 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XIII. THE MENTAL OPERATIONS

There is no immunity from spiritual contagion or infection, nor
will there ever be discovered a serum the application of which will
act as a preventive against moral or intellectual disorder. The
individual holds his destroying in his own keeping, and from him
alone ultimately must come self-preservation. Being, however,
social by his nature and born into the society of his fellows, for
some portion of his career he is entitled to assistance. This help
he should find in the bosom of his family, should expect from the
hand of parents and immediate kin; but this failing he has only
the state or the institution to appeal to. How unsolicitous govern-
ment, municipal or otherwise, is, calls for no proof.

In this country, where everyone is as good as another, and where
everyone has the right to liberty and happiness, how few institu-
tions have not been assailed by reproach and accusations so ap-
palling and so frequently justified that every honest man trembles
for the fate of the poor and the young and the infirm who pass
days of agony behind walls not too deaf to hear, but alas too im-
potent to tell of the tragedies enacted between them. It were vain
to demand what pedagogy presides over such horrors. Yet peda-
gogy of some kind there must be — some kind of explanation of the
child. However, startling as the revelations have been, they may
be paralleled by atrocities of another nature, just as calamitous in
results.

It is a savage act to starve the body and to mistreat it, and so
bar the mind behind the locks and gratings of idiocy, but is it a
much less barbarous deed to mislead the intelligence, drive it down

THE MENTAL OPERATIONS 67

paths of error and force it to drool out judgments that are but fal-
lacies and ratiocinations without logic? Intellectual training is very
deficient and very meager, if the intelligence itself is not under-
stood, if its nature and its operations are misrepresented. If it is
stripped of its spiritual nature what are its most consummate
achievements but a pyrotechnic display, or its most intricate work-
ings but traveling down blind alleys and gropings in the dark.

Give an erroneous impression of the intellectual fabric and what
is the use of rules and systems and method? There can be abso-
lutely no mental cultivation worth the while if the very essence of
all intellectuality is distorted by meaningless terms, terms contradict-
ing all tradition and the common sense of the race. As far back as
anything like philosophic system goes, mental operations have been
considered as the functions of a faculty rooted in a spiritual sub-
stance called the soul. The nature of this soul has been inferred from
the nature of these operations. It has been perceived that they tran-
scend in their power — these operations — all the activity of matter.
Matter has never been known to possess in any of its agencies the
capability with which an idea is endowed. Matter impedes matter.
Thought is never an obstacle to thought.

Much labor has been expended in the effort to pull down the soul
to the level of mere material beings, but expended in vain. No
reasoning, however subtle, has dislodged this truth from its per-
manent and impregnable position; that intellect lives in another
order of existence and is only allied to matter because of the won-
derful union existing between body and soul. It has long ago been
said, and it is still admitted, that "to be a man is not to eat, drink
and sleep, is not to build houses and cities, to ascend in space nor
fly over the surface of the earth behind a cloud of smoke. The
animal does all that better than man; the bird, the smallest gnat,

68 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

could instruct our best aeronauts and surpass our locomotives in
swiftness."

What is it then that makes us men and leads us to regard the
name of animal as a reproach? Every one answers: It is reason,
it is intellect. But is it intellect or the use that is made of it, which
places us at an immeasurable distance from the brute? The latter
is perfect in its kind, because it is all that it can be. It uses freely
the faculties it has received and never buries any of its talents. If
man neglected the sublime gift of intellect, or what is worse, if
he abused it, he would sink beneath the animal. To be a brute with
the power of not being so, is to be more a brute than the brute
itself. We are men then only so far as we are guided by reason
and make use of our intellect. Thus far the Abbe Martinet more
than half a century ago.

In the same vein other authors have written more than twenty
centuries ago, and the same thought will be expressed by the lips
and pens of men until "the last syllable of recorded time." In the
pedagogical function, which undertakes the formation of the mind
of the youth, this first fact must be steadily kept unobscured. It
must take cognizance of the processes of human mentality.

There is one soul in man and one only. There is one mind in
man and one only. One will in man and one only. To contend for
more is simply to break up man's conscious individuality; that is,
man's personality. Man's will operates in two directions, in the
direction of desire or of loathing, in the direction of hatred or love,
in the direction of attraction or repulsion. This will has been called
a blind faculty. It can accept or refuse only what is presented to
it by the intelligence and it can accept only what is evidenced to
it as good and reject only what is offered to it as not good.

This is not theory nor conjecture, but is fact. Just as surely as

THE MENTAL OPERATIONS 69

there is an outside region ; that is, a region outside the mind, teem-
ing with realities, so within each man there is an expansive ac-
tivity alive with happenings just as stubbornly real as all other
phenomena. Not to-day for the first time has it been said that what
the eye does not see the heart does not hunger for. But to-day is
repeated what has been said since the beginning, that what the
intellect does not flash upon the will, the will has no craving for.

The object of the will is good. There is a good which is becom-
ing and comfortable to right reason, and a good which may give
pleasure to an appetite, and a good useful which is conducive to
the attaining of another good. It is the duty of the intellect to offer
to the will a good which meets the principal longing of a being,
or which meets a secondary longing without injury to the principal.
It belongs to the intellect to distinguish between a true good and
an apparent good, which apparent good may be fraught with
unmistakable evil for the best interests of the individual. It is be-
cause of this obligation resting on the intelligence of man that
cultivation of the intellect is indispensable. As the mind directs,
the will will choose generally.

In considering this spiritual appetite of man it must always be
remembered that while the will has the final decision it is always
in a large measure under the influence of the light which the in-
telligence sheds upon the objects of its choice. The food of the
intelligence is truth — it is made to know the truth and the posses-
sion of the truth in its chiefest inheritance.

It would seem that pedagogy has its office clearly mapped out.
It must prepare the mind for the reception of the truth, and it
must nourish the mind upon truth, and upon truth only. The
last operation of intelligence is reasoning. It begins its activity
by impressing upon itself the mental images of the things with

70 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

which it is environed. It combines those images and shapes con-
cerning them — judgments. It compares judgments, and from this
comparison it deduces other judgments, and in this inference is its
ultimate performance or ratiocination.

The mission of pedagogy is difficult, but by no means obscure.
Teach clearness of ideas, accuracy of statement and logical com-
parison and deduction, and the mind is in possession of a training
which ought to lead to fortunate results. Prepared after this
fashion the intellect, as it develops, will find itself apt to admit
what is true and discard what is false. It has the whole world of
history, the whole world of science, the whole world of experience
to investigate; but the history must not be a tissue of falsehoods,
and the science must not be guesses or fiction or distorted ; and the
experience must, as much as possible, be kept aloof from whatever
may darken the mind, weaken the will or degrade the senses.

THE WILL 71

XIV. THE WILL

It was impossible to mention the mental operations without mak-
ing some allusions to tlie will of man. There has been the same
refusal to acknowledge the old-time view of this faculty as there
has been to admit what seems to be the universal verdict concerning
the soul itself. About the reasons for all human activity Aristotle
discourses as follows: "All agents, in whatever they do, act in
some things not of themselves, and in some other things of them-
selves. When their performances are not of themselves they are
influenced sometimes by chance, sometimes by necessity. Hence,
all involuntary deeds are either chance ones or proceed from na-
ture, or are compulsory. But the things of which men themselves
are the cause spring from habit or from desire, which desire is
sometimes directed by reason, sometimes not. Man's will is the
desire for good as approved by reason, for no one is anxious for
anything unless he esteems it as good. Desires that are unreason-
able, desires in which reason has no share, are those that are oc-
casioned by anger or cupidity. Thus there are seven causes for
the doing by man of everything that is done; they are: "Chance,
violence, instinct or nature, the semblance or reality of some good,
anger, lust or any kind of greed" (Rhet, 1. i, c. 10).

This assertion of the philosopher has been rejected by some, but
it seems to accord with reason and experience. In fact, it is in the
power of every seriously thinking man to test the value of this
opinion, which certainly has the merit of lucidity. The system of
psychology, as it is understood by those whose conservatism has
made them rally under the scholastic standard, has always con-
sidered the will as a rational appetite. That it is an appetite of

72 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

some kind there is apparently no reason to doubt. That it is in-
fluenced by reason would seem to be a foregone conclusion.

Here the question arises, if it be a reasonable appetite, if it be
a desire that will not awaken except reason presents it with acceptable
and wholesome food, how is it that men make such a mad fight
for things that harm, things that degrade, instead of for things
which improve and elevate? Our answer is that the reason of the
individual has not been sufficiently enlightened as to what is real
and what is seeming good. Another reason is that though the
mind may show what is good and what is bad, what is profitable
and what is dangerous, the will is dominant, and in spite of reason
may select what it pleases. Our greatest prerogative is freedom
of will. It is this liberty that has been the cause of all the evil as
well as of all the good which has visited humanity.

The experience of every man is that no matter how illuminated
his will may be by the light of reason or of faith, his will is the
final arbiter, and may and can follow that light or turn his back
upon it just as he pleases. He sees the best and goes after the
worst, he beholds the highest and he pursues the lowest, his reascm
teaches him wisdom and he plays the fool. What is the reason he
so often wills perversely? The reason is not that he desires harm
for himself and for those dependent upon him — were that his wish
he would be a degenerate of the blackest description — ^but his
anger or his lust nullifies all the warning of his intelligence, and
the present good of a baser kind distorted by the medium of his
passions bulks so largely and splendidly before his vision that he
rushes after the will-o'-the-wisp illusions, and so sinks instead of
soaring.

A preacher has said truly that a man in the culmination of a
blinding passion, knowing that the minute his desires would be

THE WILL 73

gratified he would be precipitated headlong to perpetual doom,
would not care for the consequences, but would sacrifice an eternity
of happiness merely for the satisfaction of a sensual or other un-
righteous moment. It has been so through all history. It has been
so since the first prevarication — it will be so until the end. How
clear all this is pointed out in Holy Writ ! How manifest it was to
the mind of St. Paul ! When he spoke in his humility of his miser-
able condition which prevented him from being "dissolved and
being with Christ" he tells us that "lest the greatness of the revela-
tion should lift me up, there was given me a sting of my flesh, an
angel of Satan to buffet me," and then makes the confession that
all men have to make : "I know that there dwelleth not in me that
which is good. For to will is present with me ; but to accomp-
lish that which is good I find not. For the good which I will I
do not, but the evil which I will not, that I do. I see another law
in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and cap-
tivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members. With the
mind I serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin"
(Rom. vii, 18-25).

From all this it is not to be inferred that the will is not the
source of man's responsibility, it is not to be inferred that a fight
is unnecessary, that a struggle is useless, that the evil can not be
overcome. Such a view would be rank heresy. Our strength lies
in the very freedom of the will, and because one is free he can
conquer, he can subdue all the desires which make for iniquity.
This very freedom of the will has made men pure and just, and
righteous and strong, against everything which goes counter to
the mandates of the Lord. He has made a compact with tempta-
tion and no one will be tried beyond his strength. The same great
Apostle, the same who passed through the river of the fire of all

74 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

tribulation, exclaims: "I am filled with comfort. I exceedingly
abound with joy in all our tribulation. In all things we suffer
tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straitened but are not
destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast
down, but we perish not. For which cause we faint not, but
though our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward man is re-
newed day by day. He saith to me: "My grace is sufficient for
thee, for power is made perfect in infirmity. Gladly, therefore,
will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell
in me."

All this is something to make the pedagogy of the day stand
aghast. In all its pharmacopoeia has it a drug to alleviate this
mortal pain, has it a medicine to heal all or any of these wounds?
If not, what is its purpose or its use? What does it claim to do
for the will of man? If it puts forward no claim then it avows
itself incomplete, inefficient, and unfit for the task committed to it —
for the task it boasts it is able to fulfil. If pedagogy insists upon
anything at all it insists that it comes as a benefactor of the race.
Aristotle says that some of men's actions are the products of
chance. Pedagogy in presence of chance is powerless. He pro-
tests that at times human activity is set in motion by compulsion
or by uncontrolled tendency of nature. Again, what part does
pedagogy play on this particular theater of human causality?
Habit or custom is another stimulus of men's deeds. Does
pedagogy instil any other habits or create any other customs than
those of intellectuality? Good or happiness is constantly eliciting
this or that act from the human will.

How far does pedagogy pretend to expound the true nature of
good or of essential happiness? Even were its enlightenment on
this prime mover of all voluntary acts as bright as the meridian sun,

THE WILL

75

how much would it contribute toward leading the will, or to
training the will, that it would choose rather the narrow and bleak
road of self-denial than the primrose path of dalliance.

The strength as well as the weakness of the will lies in habit.
If habits are good, the will is strong in the proper sense of the
word strong. If habits are bad, then the will is tossed about by
the wind of every doctrine, and instead of being the dominant is
the serf faculty of the individual. What the will needs is principles
that are eternal in their wisdom and their origin. Nor is this all.
Mere instruction, now that so many splendid maxims have forced
their beauty upon the race, is not enough. These may capture the
mind, but they do not take captive the will. Therefore, the will
needs an auxiliary potent to help it over the many stiles it encoun-
ters. That assistance is not within the gift of man, that assistance
is found in the Omnipotent only. He comes with His grace, and
His grace is sufficient for all things. Pedagogy unassisted can not
give it. So the conclusion is forced upon all educators that
pedagogy without religion is a rotten hose that can not put out a
fire, a punctured life-preserver which can not keep a drowning
man afloat. It is the flimsiest of pretenses and an insult and an
injury to all whom it endeavors to befriend.

76 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XV. THE MEMORY

Every one understands what memory is, and appreciates its im-
portance as a factor in the attainment and imparting of knowledge,
and how much, too, it conduces toward enhancing all intellectual
pleasure. The more defective the memory is the more impotent
is the individual to enjoy what is worth enjoying in the past and
the more isolated he finds himself in all intercourse with his fel-
lows. Forgetfulness is sometimes a blessing, but nevertheless re-
membering, too, is a blessing. In a way it is possessed by mere
animals, but not along the same lines.

Notions of the nature of memory have not undergone many, if
any, changes since the days of the old philosophers. Plato called
it conservatrix of perceptions, Aristotle conservatrix of species.
Species are perceptions, and memory has the power of storing them
away somewhere and bidding them appear on demand. Aristotle
says hope is the sense of future things, memory of past ones.
Whatever may have been excogitated since, the idea of memory
is the traditional one, the one conformable to the hourly experience
of all. Everybody admits that it is a faculty which enables us to
retain modifications and ideas and judgments occurring in the past,
and to recognize them as belonging to the past and not to the
present. The memory, therefore, is the knowledge of things past
as past and as having previously come under our notice.

A good memory is alert to receive new things, sure and constant
in holding them, and quick in recalling them. While we admit a
phantasmal memory in brutes, the memory referred to here is the
intellectual memory. It is not an added faculty of the soul, but it is
the mind exercising its wonderful flexibility — a flexibility which all
the research of science and the ingenuity of invention have not been

THE MEMORY 77

able to discover in or bestown upon matter. Matter can not juggle
with things as mind can, and so the latter must belong to an order
of being transcending all the qualities of the former.

Besides past events, memory summons up facts which are inti-
mately and inseparably connected with them. We can not recognize
past happenings without having it forced upon us that we were
existent then, that we were in possession of our individuality, that
we were the same men then as we are now and that during the in-
terval our existence endured. Memory thus persuades us of our
past existence, our individual identity and our uninterrupted per-
severance in being. It is not wonderful that this gift has been
highly prized. That it comes within the scope of pedagogy is quite
apparent. That it can be learned was admitted from the beginning.
The Mnemonic art is very ancient. Methods of assisting the
memory are not of modern origin. Simonides, the poet, connected
certain words and figures with certain determined points in space.
In our own day the art is being taught and cultivated almost every-
where. No one can find any legitimate opposition to it.

The first mission of pedagogy is to assist nature in the develop-
ment of all its powers. Like every art, like everything pedagogy
undertakes to do, it is subject to abuse. Perhaps there may be
overcultivation, as there is of gymnastics and other kindred arts.
The doctrine of Albert the Great, it is said, was this : "There are
no other precepts for the memory than to exercise it, and writing
and thinking." St. Thomas holds that every faculty is strengthened
by exercise and that the memory is more retentive of things which
impress the fancy or are associated with other things better known.
How indispensable memory is every one grants, and probably the
first fact which pedagogy should impress upon the mind of youth
is this very indispensability.

78 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

Pedagogy should moreover insist on the importance of the old-
time principle that no one is a man except in proportion as he pos-
sesses a sound mind in a sound body. It may be easier to con-
vince the young of the momentousness of a sound body. If they
are convinced of this a sure and not a short step is made in the right
direction. Bodily health is hygienic and moral. As to the dictates
of morality, how far pedagogy, as it is generally known to-day, is
in a condition to push them is not very difficulty to say. The
truncated systems of education are powerless in the presence of
certain obstacles. They can not "minister to a mind diseased."

"Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain.
And with some sweet, oblivious antidote
Qeanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous strife
Which weighs upon the heart."

There are maladies of the soul which disturb the sweet order
of nature and which pedagogy in its twentieth century representa-
tive can no more touch than the baying of a hound can reach the
moon. There are maladies which educational training, such as it
is, nearly everywhere to-day, not only is unable to heal, or even
direct the healing of, but of which it takes no notice, has no care.
"Therein the patient must minister unto himself." These disorders
of a hidden nature sap everything which is finest in the youth, and
the atmosphere of the modern school room is their choicest hunt-
ing ground, and is incessantly breeding microbes which are full of
moral infection and danger. This is the greatest crime of which
pedagogy is guilty. It is a crime of indirection if you will, but still
a crime. There is only one refuge, and that refuge is not even
indicated by the theories which claim to contribute so much glory
to the splendor of the times.

THE MEMORY 79

Memory and all intellectual activity are pearls, but pearls which,
when flung into the cup of dissipation of any kind, melt and dis-
appear. Is there any remedy offered for paresis and paranoia?
They have no remedy. When they take possession of the individual
then is the individual truly a prisoner shut up in his cell awaiting
the hour for his execution, an hour which is inevitable. These poor
and not wholly guilty victims are a libel on education, they are a
refutation of the nauseating vauntings of an incompetent race,
they nullify every boast that is made of modern civilization. There
they stand, grinning specters, with long fingers outstretched in ac-
cusation against the training which not of itself, but of its own
criminal unwatchfulness, but of its own responsible deficiencies,
have helped thrust these branded specimens of mankind into the
dungeons wherein the body begins to decay, and the blighted mind
and memory and will wear the stripes and carry around the ball
and chain of condemned prisoners. It is unnecessary to state that
when this doom falls upon a man there is no "purging him to a
sound and pristine health."

There is only one way to lessen the number of these decadents,
and that way is the way not of cure, but of prevention. Needless to
say that a sane and safe ethics is a preventive, but no matter how
sane and safe is still insufficient. Ethics may lift the standard of
morality, but it can not rally under it sturdy adherents. Principles
of right conduct are bright lights, but they only show the way.
They can not lead, or use the sweet violence which captures a man's
will and takes so much of the bitterness out of self-sacrifice. We
are drawn to the logical conclusion that if the world cares for
morality it must call in the aid of religion. If ethics, even when in-
dicating the only path, is so helpless, what must necessarily be the

So CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

consequences of a moral philosophy which is godless and material.
It were better to drop the curtain here.

Matching colors in a kindergarten exercise, obtaining a law or
general rule from the observation of particular cases, learning of
dates, examples of the conjoint workings of similarity and con-
tiguity, convergent and invergent associations, all these are without
doubt powerful aids to the culture of memory, but they are not the
most powerful or the only aids. But memory is a privileged func-
tion of man's intelligence. In its flexibility it gazes around at the
present and takes in all the past. But it calls for something on
the part worth the looking at. It is an awful curse if the memory
has only a blighted past to summon up — a blighted past foretelling
a dreary future.

Man's memory was not given him for gloom, but for radiance,
and to remember white days gone by and bright years to come.
This boon is accorded only to him who remembers his Maker from
the days of his youth.

TRUTH 8 1

XVI. TRUTH

Truth has many counterfeits in this world, and, alas! that it
must be said they are so well fashioned that they frequently defy
detection. In fact, they are not only mistaken for the genuine
article, but in many instances they are preferred. Nay! they are
not preferred merely, but they are cherished by their possessors
to such a degree that not only will they not be given up, but every
effort is made to convince others of their being superior to the most
sterling coin in circulation. Such individuals, while they care not
that they are under the spell of a lie, hug the monstrosity to their
breasts with an ardor that brooks of no contradiction and will listen
to no challenge. It still seems that the old myth has a foundation
in reality, it still seems that truth dwells naked at the bottom of a
well, and never appears without some covering or mark which dis-
guises it and balks all identification.

If truth was regnant this earthly abode would be a habitation
much more desirable than it is now. Undoubtedly many disclosures
would be made embarrassing and degrading. Many unconvicted
criminals would be behind bars, many hypocrites would be made
manifest and much hidden merit and unknown heroism disclosed.
If truth prevailed for one day the whole world over, upon what
changes and unexpected scenes the moon and the stars would
look. Profit and loss would exchange places, and officials and
rulers and superiors of all descriptions would be found shrinking
from the gaze of those subject to their sway. "Then shall they
begin to say to the mountains, fall upon us, and to the hills, cover
us" (Luke xxiii, 30). There would be "signs on the sun, and moon,
and stars, and on the earth distress of nations by reason of the con-

82 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

fusion of the sound of the sea and of the waves, men withering
away for fear and expectation of the things which are coming
upon the world" (Luke 21).

Such a day has not dawned as yet, but such a day will dawn.
When Pilate asked Christ what is truth, was he asking for a defini-
tion, or was his question simply a lament that in all this bewilder-
ment of the accusations and demands made against the Saviour, he
did not know where was truth, who was lying, who was guilty, or
who was innocent. He knew most certainly what truth was, but he
knew not where it was in that stirring hour when he was called upon
to decide between the Man of Sorrows and the rabble who were
hounding Him.

The child knows what truth is. No one has ever lied deliberately
without knowing that he was concealing something or making
one thing appear another thing. There are more lies told than there
are misdemeanors of any kind committed. Yet in spite of the pre-
valence of unveracity there is no accusation stings more sharply,
no accusation more deeply resented, than the accusation which vili-
fies one as a liar. Call a man a liar and you insult him perhaps as
in no other way he can be insulted. But it is the application that
men dread more than the meriting it. It is the term they mind,
not the thing. Of course, lying is not in itself the worst of crimes,
though there is a pedagogy which teaches practically that it is bet-
ter to be anything else than a liar. Still, lying leads to much
wrong, is productive of much harm. Lie to a man's mind and you
starve and poison it. Lie to a man's character and he may sink
never to rise again. Lie to a man's heart and his faith not only
in man, but in God as well, may be jeopardized.

If the history of the evil wrought by prevarication is ever writ-
ten it will reveal that a lie has been through all the centuries an as-

TRUTH 83

sassin, with arm uplifted and blade unsheathed, stabbing unto death
the good name and the happiness of individuals, families and com-
monwealths. Certainly teach the young the value of truth, teach
the young the malice of untruth. Let him learn what a perversion
it is of that precious gift of God, speech. Let him learn why God
gave him a tongue. Let him understand that language is the
bridge by which he is put in communion with his fellowman for
that man's and for his own good. It has been given him to make
others know the life that is within him, to make him know the
thoughts he thinks, the wishes he conceives and the needs that
have to be supplied. He is not forced to express any one of his
thoughts, or any one of his wishes, but when he does tell his
thought his lips must not go counter to his mind. If the mind says
yes, the lips must say yes ; if the mind says no, then the lips must
also say no. To do otherwise is to lie.

When his son was taking leave of Polonius he impressed some
sterling precepts on his memory, and among them this :

"This above all: to thine own self be true.
And it must follow as the day the night
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

The old courtier's idea of character is summed up in being false
to no one and in being true to one's own self. It is the summing up
of all that life is worth living for. What a man is the man who
is true to himself! Such an one is true to the best that is in him,
and what is best in him is the great natural law which imperiously
commands him to do his duty toward God, himself and his fellow-
man.

The greatest calamity which can overtake the human race is the
destruction of truth. This disaster reaches every man and every-

84 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

thing in man. It is an insult to his mind, it is an injury to his body,
to his moral and his material wellbeing. What has history been,
what is it to-day? A conspiracy against the truth. Nearly all
contemporary chronicling is exaggeration and misrepresentation.
Journalism has discredited itself so largely that very few are satis-
fied that it photographs the times as they are. Enter the world of
business and of trade and again the same unreliability is found.
Who trusts anybody or everybody to-day ? Legislation is constantly
being summoned to come to the protection of the people against
all kinds of fraudulent dealing. Adulterated food, adulterated
drink, adulterated medicine, seem to be the order of the day.
Honesty is no longer the best policy, and there is no crime which
makes such a determined fight against law as the crime of dis-
honesty. Public officials, magistrates, men in high places have been
found venal.

The most staggering proposition the community has to face
to-day is the lie in every department of mind, of conscience, of
commerce, of literature and of art. Certainly where there looms
such a gigantic menace pedagogy must be doubly on its guard.
But what can it achieve if there be prevarication in its own prin-
ciples, in its own methods, if the views it supports are views which
neither religion nor reason can sanction? If we pass from peda-
gogy to the pedagogue the situation becomes more alarming. Com-
mitted to untenable propositions, propositions which are gratuitous
assertions at best, whither is he to turn?

It ought never to be forgotten that untruth is untruth. It
ought always to be remembered that the man who has been de-
liberately a liar once can never obliterate the fact. No matter what
his remorse, or his repentance, or his atonement, the fact remains

TRUTH 8s

that at one time or other he was a prevaricator. This is among the
reasons why the way of the transgressor is hard.

Boys or girls must be taught the respectability of speech from the
beginning. They must be convinced and persuaded that they are
liable for all the consequences of their untruth. Precept may help
thereunto, but precept is not the compelling will in the direction of
truth. The professor must be instinct with the hatred of the lie,
with love of truth. The preceptor who in the classroom has not
the courage to say : *T do not know," when proposed a query the
answer to which is outside his mental possession, that teacher is a
pitiable object. Children may be brought to understand that their
master does not, because no man can, know everything, but he
is to them off the pedestal on which they have placed him when he
misrepresents or is cowardly enough to give a stone when asked
for bread.

There are such terms as evasion and the like, but it is
not given to every mind to see that, disguised though they
be, they are still lies. The teacher while exemplifying the truth
in all his speech must use a strong hand against tale-bearing.
Very few can report the misdemeanor of another and keep the
report within the limit of truth. It is generally a breeder of exag-
geration and lies. That at times it may be an obligation of con-
science can not be denied, but it is full of pitfalls for truth, and
truth is too sacred a thing to be exposed to the vagaries of imagi-
nation and the violence of jealousy, or any other human passion.

86 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XVII. OBEDIENCE

Order is nature's first law and obedience is order's chief help-
mate. Without order there is only confusion and wild uproar and
darkness and chaos.

*The heavens themselves, the planets and this center
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insistence, course, proportion, season, form.
Office and custom;, in all line of order."

The Greek expression "Cosmos" signifies that all the beauty of
the universe results from rule and order. There is no order without
law, and law is powerless without obedience. The foundation,
therefore, of all regularity and of all peace is obedience. It is a
virtue surely that claims a place among the practises of men, and
not the last place does it claim, nor is its principle of a nature to
invite discussion or cavil. It is a claimant whose rights to rule have
never been successfully disputed. Cancel this virtue and there arises
in its stead either anarchy or might, more frequently might. But it
is not in the designs of Providence that fear alone should keep
men in obedience. Obedience is a duty and a virtue. Because it
is a virtue it is estimable, because a duty it must be performed.

Cicero has called virtue a habit of the mind, consistent with
nature and moderation and reason. That obedience, when thor-
oughly understood, fills all the demands of this description is ap-
parent at a glance. Unless virtue is habitual it is no virtue. It is
a spasmodic something unwatched by reason and entirely unre-
liable. Virtue becomes a law unto oneself and, therefore, while
a habit, must be in accordance with the dictates of a sound mind.
Every virtue is controlled by the cardinal one of temperance, and

OBEDIENCE 87

hence obedience must be moderate. Immoderate obedience or
unreasoning acquiescence is the fruitful parent of many evils, and
in the end will produce the very disorder which is the aim of
obedience to prevent. These very obvious notions are as essential
as they are elementary. They are fundamental. Their obviousness,
when we look around to-day at the moral world, and especially
at those regions of it which lie within the province of pedagogy, is
not immediately apparent.

The schools of to-day can not always be labeled the homes of
obedience. Far from it. The wild uproar that penetrates the
school walls and deafens the public ear and is phonographed by the
daily press, forces upon this generation the fear that discipline
is not perfect and that obedience is not implicit. Many schools are
the strongholds of little rebels. Many colleges and universities give
evidence of an unrelish for order and a love of agitation which
precludes the possibility of an atmosphere in which study and quiet
find respiration, to say the least, difficult. The schools and colleges
and universities are not altogether to be blamed. They deserve
censure, however, for tolerating the condition as long as they have
tolerated it.

It is with the family, with the home, that severest reckoning is
to be had. All institutions receive only what parents bring them.
Sometimes the children are susceptible of the highest training;
sometimes they are beyond the reach of all control. Home habits
have destroyed all the raw material out of which improvement can
be manufactured. Children come to school who never followed,
since their babyhood, any will but their own. They were always
insurrectionists, and the successful rebel becomes a tyrant, and
these scions have tyrannized over parents, brothers, sisters and
companions until the very ' ultimate spark of obedience is extin-

88 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

guished beyond rekindling. School is no place for such a class.
There are reformatories — send them there. The world seems to
have turned upside down, and parents no longer command their
children, but rather their children command them, and it is too
well known how readily and entirely parents obey.

No spirit of pessimism inspires these words. They are written
after long observation and an impartial scrutiny of the relation in
which 2.arents and children, teachers and pupils, superiors and in-
feriors stand toward each other. Remedies have been suggested.
It is curious to notice how little has been said by pedagogues regard-
ing moral influence and how strenuously they have emphasized the
thirteenth verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Proverbs, which
declares that "he that spareth the rod hateth his son, but he that
loveth him correcteth him betimes." It has been said, and by those
who had no desire to praise, that in the schools where religion is
accounted as a not insignificant element in education, where the
members of the church instruct, teach and visit, it has been said
that in these schools there is a discipline springing from a spirit of
obedience, which is as perfect as should be looked for where human
agencies are employed in the upbringing of that most animal por-
tion of the race, that is, the child.

Yet animals are susceptible of training to a very marked degree.
Their unfailing obedience is marvelous. Nor is this obedience
always compelled by reflecting blows or hardship of any kind.
Almost from the moment that the babe is laid for the first time
in its mother's arms its training should begin. Habits of all kinds
may commence to be formed. As the child grows, habits of obedi-
ence become stronger, and then when reason enters the field it will
find a willing confederate in all the prudent parental caution of the
past. As the home is, so the boy is, so the girl is.

OBEDIENCE 89

School life and after-companionship may play havoc with home
influence, but that influence never entirely fades, and the little
glimmer which never dies may some day or other break out into
a large and all-illuminating flame, showing the path which leads
upward and to God. If the confession is a sincere one, the confes-
sion that grants that the obedience to be found in schools to-day is
only the offspring of fear and not the child of virtue, what does the
pedagogy which takes no count of morality propose to do? The
greatest weakness and the blackest disgrace of pedagogy, as it is
furnished forth by men of note, men whose names are not empty
ones in circles where education is esteemed, is its powerlessness in
presence of crises and emergencies. No crisis, no emergency, is
paramount to the danger so imminent as the danger of begetting
in youth disrespect for authority.

What are the motives held out to the young men studying here
and there in this country to-day? They are told to study — they
refuse and there is always and only the threat of no promotion.
Riotous conduct has startled and antagonized some university town.
The dismayed authorities have only the resource of a menace.
Find out the offenders, they say, and they will be driven from the
college. Punishing is not checking. Punishment follows the wrong-
doing. Is there nothing antecedent to the crime ?. Is there nothing
to give the young rioters pause ? Is there no inward appeal to their
conscience, their manhood, their love of Alma Mater, the de-
ference they owe the president and the faculty? There seems to
be only contempt for authority. They laugh at castigation of any
kind. Expulsion? Their predecessors did the same thing in the
past and they received their degree and they are honored men in
the community to-day. Must the secular arm be called upon to
help? This would certainly be an avowal of weakness, this would

90 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

bring about a kingdom within a kingdom, all of which would mean
impaired usefulness, dishonest compromise and ultimate degrada-
tion.

Pedagogy seems not to understand what authority is, and, not
understanding, how can it enforce obedience? All authority comes
from God is the first principle to be admitted. No man, as mere
man, has power over another. Whoever is the legitimate superior
has that superiority from God. So that all obedience is the sub-
jection to the will of God as manifested by all whom He has placed
over us. This theory of obedience when reduced to practise makes
the practise easy. It is God whom all are called upon to obey in the
person of those who represent Him here. These representatives
are the Church, its minister, parents, teachers, employers. This
idea does not beget servility or fear. It is an honor inestimable to
be a servant in the household of such a master. This ennobles
obedience, and where the spirit of obedience rules, the earth be-
comes impregnated with the salt of salvation.

Disobedience brought all woes into the world, and there was
need of an heroic obedience to rescue it. That redeeming obedience
is the light of the world to-day. It is the obedience of Him who
obeyed unto death, even unto the death of the Cross. "For as by
the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also by the
obedience of one, many shall be made just" (Rom. v, 19).

HONOR

XVIII. HONOR

91

Honor is a possession more precious than a crown. All claim it
as theirs, but how many have it? As a guerdon it is not a single
jewel, but a galaxy of precious stones. It is not the setting of man-
hood, but it is the setting and the diamond together. It is the whole
man. It is not declamation, but action. It is not speech, but deed
and thought and language all in one. It is above the throne of the
monarch, above the majesty of his scepter. It is not the appanage
of place. "Honor and shame from no condition rise, Act well your
part, there all the honor lies." Therein is the essence of honor, the
performance unto perfection of the role imposed upon us by the
Maker at our birth. It is a word on every lip. It is appealed to uni-
versally in every emergency. The man who is not honorable is dis-
honorable, and is shunned by his kind. Who is the man of honor ?
He is one who never lies to his God, to himself, to his fellows. He
is one who is true through and through.

Honor, since the beginning, has been the watchword, the slogan
of humanity. There is a subtle something in it which attracts and
awakens confidence. He who can say that everything is lost save
honor can not die unwept, unhonored or unsung. Keeping honor,
he has kept all that is worth the having ; flinging it away, he is poor
indeed, no matter what untold sums may be in his coffers. So
there is in honor a twofold aspect. It is, first, the integrity of the
individual, his moral worth, and, secondly, the flashing out of that
upon the eyes of men, its recognition by those with whom he moves
and has his dealings. It is a substantial something, is honor. It is
not reputation merely, but it is a good name built securely on the
foundation of internal worth.

92 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

Honor is not a thing which can be lost and restored by a bullet
or a sword thrust, or by any letting of blood. Such reparation is
none whatever, and is the senseless bravado only of unconsidering
and headlong passion. Honor depends solely on the individual him-
self. If he be unrecognized, or if he be calumniated, his honor still
remains. His wife and his family and his closest friends may dis-
grace themselves, but the taint can not contaminate the man of
genuine honor. It is the man himself. As he is, his honor is. If
he is compacted of the essential elements of honor he may be
branded in life and in death, yet still his honor persists. It is so
much the man himself that when he pledges his honor he pledges
himself. If he breaks his pledge he breaks himself. Perhaps he
may not feel this himself, but the world has judged him, and the
judgment of the world is a right one.

The one who does right at all times, under all circumstances, in
private or in public, sick or well, poor or rich, in his most intimate
thoughts, that one is the man of honor, and such an one rivets the
gaze of admiring men and wins the approval of heaven. Scripture
has another name for honor — it is justice. The highest tribute it
pays to any of its heroes is the tribute that he is a just man. Anal-
ized we find both terms interchangeable. The just man is one
who, in the whole range of his activity, in all his aspirations, in-
tentions, desires, aims at giving all concerned their due. He wrongs
no one, he pays the debt he owes to God, to his neighbor and to
himself. When his life closes everything in his career balances,
and he enters the home of his eternity unshackled by any unfulfilled
obligation, he enters unashamed and fearless, and confident, and
the greeting of the Master is: Well done, thou good and faithful
servant. Honor certainly can create nothing more perfect than this
just man.

HONOR

93

There is a superficial honor which is a very poor substitute for
the genuine reaHty. There are men who will neither lie nor steal,
who will not be unjustly aggressive, who will "help lame dogs" in-
numerable over stiles, and in so much are they to be commended.
But is this the only duty of man ? Does not the inspiration of honor
lead in other directions and toward the discharge of other duties?
If they go by default, it they are never discharged, what about
honor? Such honor is only the feather in the cap or the epaulettes
on the shoulder, but it is not the whole uniform of the fighter in the
warfare of existence. Such honor is only skin deep, and it is to be
feared that such honorable men may have their price. The world is
better off for having such men, but how much better off it would
be were these men to stride further in the path of honor and stand
sentinels protecting all that is worth saving in this so wretched vale
of tears ! It is the wretched vale that it is just because they do not.

This thorough conception of honor prevails among men only as
an unattainable ideal. The honor that is sterling abides in heart
and mind and hands. The honesty which keeps a man out of jail
is not honor. The self-respect which holds a man's arm from
striking a cowardly blow is not honor. The man of honor is the
most fearless of men and the bravest. His manhood is never in
abeyance, it is ever alive. He is a gentleman in the truest sense
of the word. He is always at his post. He is always to be trusted,
always and everywhere and with every one.

Is this paragon an impossibility ? Does he exist only in the dreams
of poets ? Thank God, no. Such a paragon is not only a possibility,
but he is to be found among living, breathing men. He has played
his part in history. He is not a solitary figure in Scripture. He has
been found and can be found in every station. He has been found
where the highest culture prevailed. He has also been found in

94 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

circles where no pedagogy was able to penetrate. The world laud?
him whose word is as good as his bond, and surely this footstool
would be a summer clime were there multitudes of such men.

Again, this is only one feature of honor. If such a man is your
debtor you need pass no sleepless nights, your investment is safe,
your loan will be repaid. All this is commercial honor, and to be
possessed of it is to be rich indeed. So splendid a thing is it to-day
that where it flourishes two conclusions may be safely deduced:
either the one who conserves it has behind it the backing of the
larger honor therein discussed, or where he has achieved so much
a vigorous stride would plant his feet on the topmost heights. Here
the old question can not be downed: How far does pedagogy, as
we know it, go toward elevating character to this dignity? Can
mere intellectual training fashion such a superior being? Does it
enter into its scope? Does it consider it at all?

No effect can transcend its cause. There is nothing in the educa-
tion theories of these times which aims at it. There is nothing in
those systems out of which such a perfection could be evolved. If
one glances at the ideas which are in vogue in the domain of phil-
osophy one sees not one which could give it birth. All views of the
coryphaei who speak through megaphones in sonorous tones and
who are oracles in matters relating to mind may be investigated, and
outside those who have in their elaborations kept Christian land-
marks in view, there is not an opinion advocated which, to put it
very plainly, sees any need of honor, which makes any successful
plea in its behalf, or which gives it a place among the foremost
qualifications of the individual for the struggle of existence.

Moreover, honor lies in the will. Ethics can show how reasonable
it is and how beautiful and momentous, but that is all. There is
demanded a strength for the will, a strength constant and over-

HONOR ' 95

coming, a strength superhuman. The dwarfed training tactics
which are paraded so ostentatiously touch not the will. A complete
pedagogical system must take this into account, otherwise the drill,
no matter how laborious, will not produce fighters, such as are
needed in the world. When man feels that he is succumbing under
the pressure of temptation, of a temptation so paralyzing that he
forgets rank, family, duties and all that he should die for, there is
only one resource, and that is help from on high. He must stand
fast on the faith and remember that without honor all is lost.

96 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XIX. SELF-RESPECT

Self-respect is undoubtedly the mainspring of all that is right
and decent in the individual. It seems so natural to respect one's self
and so easy, but is so difficult that it is always making demands
which are not easy to indolent natures to grant and which suppose
a self-sacrifice not always commonplace. One is more careful when
pne has to answer for one's conduct to others and, for very patent
reasons, one compromises with one's self without any very great
effort. Self-love is at the bottom of it all. There will never be
a superfluity of self-respect until the individual begins to appre-
ciate himself at his real value. Men sell themselves into bondage
at a discount always. If they only knew their own worth they
would demand a larger price, perhaps a so much larger price that
the purchaser would not be able to buy and thus the individual
would be free.

There is something so grand, so inspiring in freedom. God knew
it and gave us liberty that €ven He Himself will not shackle save
by the sweetest moral compulsion. So few realize what they barter
away when they put their necks under the heel of any man ! "Every
man has his price" is a saying which daily experience is emphatic-
ally verifying. It is well that every man should have his price if
that price is anything like an equivalent for what is surrendered.
When men put themselves up for sale they ought, if they are at all
commercial in their instincts, name as the ultimate sum the highest
amount, and yet see for what insignificant values they exchange
their manhood! The price varies from ten cents — thugs have
assassinated for as small a coin as that — up to ten millions.

SELF-RESPECT 97

The price that some vendors demand, however, and God be praised
for it, can not be found in this universe, and in the whole world
there is no bank that can furnish the bond. These last are the
unfallen ones of the race. How numerous they are, it is an
impossibility to reckon. Pessimists would say that not one such
can be found in the stretches which lie between the poles. Opti-
mists, that is rational optimists, who have experience, will admit
that they are in larger numbers than is supposed, otherwise every
vestige of good would have vanished from the earth. The balance
of the world must be kept, otherwise very little of this very small
globe of ours would be in the sunlight. Are there more venal
than incorruptible men in the world? This is a departure in
statistics which has not yet been made. Is there an equal number
of both? Does it require equality on each side to even up the
scales? Or is one honest man double or triple the weight of the
dishonest one? '^

Still there is a standard of judgment. In Genesis (xviii) we are
told that the Lord with Abraham went their way to Sodom. "But
Abraham as yet stood before the Lord, and drawing nigh he said :
Wilt thou destroy the just with the wicked? If there be fifty
just men in the city, shall they perish withal and wilt thou not
spare the place for the sake of the fifty just, if they be therein?
Far be it from thee to do this thing and to slay the just with the
wicked, and for the just to be in like case with the wicked. This is
not beseeming Thee, thou who judgest all the earth wilt not make
this judgment. And the Lord said to him: If I find in Sodom
fifty just within the city, I will spare the whole place for their
sake. And Abraham answered and said: Seeing I have once
begun, I will speak to my Lord, whereas I am dust and ashes.
What if there be less than fifty just persons? Wilt thou for

98 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGYt

five and forty destroy the whole city? And he said, I will not
destroy it, if I find five and forty. And again he said to him,
But if forty be found there, what wilt thou do? He said, I
will not destroy it for the sake of forty. Lord, saith he, be not
angry, I beseech thee, if I speak. What if thirty shall be found
there? He answered, I will not do it if I find thirty there.
Seeing, saith he, I have once begun, I will speak to my Lord.
What if twenty be found there? He said, I will not destroy
it for the sake of twenty. I beseech thee, saith he, be not angry,
if I speak once more. What if ten should be found there? And
(he said, I will not destroy it for the sake of ten. And the Lord
departed, after he had been speaking to Abraham, and Abraham
returned to his place."

As a fact five were saved from destruction, and of the five
one was turned into "a statue of salt." As to the rest: "And the
Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from
the Lord out of heaven. And he destroyed these cities and all
the country about, all of the inhabitants of the cities and all things
that spring from the earth." There is no need of an apology for
the quotation. It is a rare one and it brings to mind some things
worth remembering and suggests questions worth the asking and
worth the answering. It would be entirely unwarrantable, perhaps,
to assert that it fixes the percentage of just men in the world, but
also, perhaps, it does establish the proportion of such individuals
in the Sodoms and Gomorrhas of civilization. One point it does
unmistakabty settle and that is how much a few just men weigh
before the Almighty. Who knows why Abraham ceased his petition
when he did? Who knows whether the Lord would not have
delayed the visitation of His anger if there had been one just
man? Who can say that there was even one just man in that

SELF-RESPECT 99

abomination of desolation? It may be that in that family of Lot
alone was found the only self-respecting man.

Self-respect is not outward demeanor or deportment. Self-
respect is not respect for others merely, nor having a regard for what
others may think or say or do. It is something more subtle. It
lies very far below the surface. When we discover it we reach
something that involves high principles and fundamental truths. He
is a rare species, this absolutely self-respecting man. Self-respect
is a just regard for and appreciation for one's own excellence.
One's own excellence! This is saying everything and it is not
saying too much.

This consideration one is called upon to have for himself is not
pride or conceit, nor even is it selfishness in the objectionable
meaning of the term. It is esteeming one's self at one's real value,
at the value put upon one by the Creator when He looked upon his
[handiwork and saw it was good. The first fact concerning him-
self and which he is obliged to admit, is that were he alone in this
world, that in it there is nothing in the majesty and beauty of it
that does not lie at an immeasurable distance from him, that he
is first and foremost in intrinsic importance. This is the long
held view of man. His body is a masterpiece of marvelous per-
fection enhanced by its companionship with an immortal soul.
Body and soul in their wonderful union form an entity higher than
which are the angels and God, and lower than which everything,
that is not man, is. The body derives its special worth from the
soul which vitalizes it, and which, when the span of years de-
termined upon by Omniscience is passed, will call it back to itself to
be reunited with it forever.

Man's value has been vaguely determined when the Saviour asked
"What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his

loo CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

own soul? This is the standard of self-respect. If understood
aright, man would respect his body and his soul. Respect of the
body calls for a temperance and a purity so immaculate as to befit
the temple of the Holy Ghost. Respect for soul commands the
keeping mind and will and heart unspotted of the world and of all
iniquity. Self-respect imperiously compels the respect of others.
Who can measure the distance it goes in the direction of the forma-
tion of character? It is self-love in its highest phase. It is no im-
perfection and it checks the vile enormity of self -neglecting.

"Let each man think himself an act of God,
His mind a thought, his life a breath of God."

This is the higher pantheism. Where in the whole range of
unchristian pedagogy are its principles recognized or its lessons
taught?

LAIV loi

XX. LAW

Law is the sentinel of humanity and the custodian of civilization.
It is the force connecting individuality with each other and nations
with nations. It is the energy which upholds order and protects
it against chaos. Its majesty cannot be too much extolled, nor its
necessity competently corroborated. Without it there is no living,
no life, only disorder and death. After the Creator, it is what
is noblest in the world. It is in fact the clearest and loudest
and truest expression of the divinity. It breathes beauty into all
things that are, it is the soul of all that commands the respect of
men. It is the megaphone of the Almighty, and its tones are heard
from end to end of the earth. These commonplaces have been
uttered since the beginning and, lest we forget, they are to be
dinned and dinned into the ears of all. Always repeated, there is no
satiety in the repetition. The highest minds have thought after
this fashion. The law is for everybody and no one is exempt. For
"as the law is set over the magistrate," says Cicero, "even so are
the magistrates set over the people." And therefore it may be
truly said that the magistrate is a speaking law and the law is a
silent magistrate.

To quote literature when and where it speaks of the dignity of
law would be an endless task. This points unmistakably to the
reverential awe with which the law is regarded. Men may break
the law, but somewhere or other within them is a latent respect
for it. There are laws human and laws divine. Human laws are
but the copies more or less imperfect of the eternal law. It is
this eternal law which is the well undefiled from which are drawn

102 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

all the laws which bind mankind. The recognition of this eternal
law is of supreme importance, and it alone makes for all observ-
ance. We might call the eternal law an act of God*s will by which
necessarily and from all eternity he decrees that all his creatures be
directed, suitably to their natures, toward an end which He
appoints. This law is so universal that it extends not alone to
the moral world of rational beings but to the physical world too.
It is compulsory not only for the order of nature but for the super-
natural order as well.

St. Thomas distinguishes this law from Providence. "Provi-
dence," he says, "is not the eternal law in God but a consequence
of it.'* The task of Divine Providence, if we may use the word
task, is to see that the law decreed from all eternity be plenarily
fulfilled in the progress and consummation of all things. These
are not useless considerations because they furnish the basis of all
morality, of all moral obligation and of the moral efficacy of all
human legislation. It was recognized dimly, but surely, by pagan
philosophers. The so often cited passage of Cicero bears testimony
to this : "It has been the conviction of the wisest among men that
a law exists not framed by human ingenuity nor the outcome of
popular approval, but a something eternal, which governs the uni-
verse by sage commands and prohibition. They called that imperial
and fundamental mandate the divine mind, ordering something and
forbidding others. It began to exist when the divine intelligence
began. Hence this real and supereminent law is nothing else but
the infallible reason of the Supreme God."

In another place the same philosopher emphasizes more markedly
the same view of law. "There is an undoubted law proceeding
from an all-seeing mind, a law in harmony with nature, promul-
gated everywhere, constant, sempiternal. It calls by a command

LAtV t03

to the performance of duty, and by a prohibition it deters from
wrong. It never forbids or orders anything in vain to the upright,
and the wicked, whether it forbids or commands, are unmoved by it.
This law must not be abrogated nor must the least thing derog-
atory to it be permitted. In its entirety it must remain unchanged.
Nor senate nor people have the right to amend or destroy it. It
needs no expounder nor interpreter. It is not one law at Rome,
another at Athens, nor one law now and another then, but all
nations and all times are obligated by its everlasting and immutable
sway, for its sole framer and legislator is the Master of all, God.
He is the founder of this law, its interpreter and mouthpiece. Who-
ever refuses allegiance is untrue to himself, despises the nature of
man, and in this way undergoes the greatest of all tortures, no
matter how many of her so-called penalties he may escape." This
assertion that the law will be its own avenger is surprisingly like
many of the utterances of the Apostle of the Gentiles.

Two or three centuries before Cicero, Sophocles puts the
following words on the lips of the Chorus: "Would that it were
given me to pursue that holy integrity of words and deeds which
is sanctioned by that sublime law, begotten in the celestial abode
by the Olympian father alone, which, man left to himself, one
could never dream of and which he will never be able to obliterate,
for the great God, whose years never fail, is its author." Again,
the same writer makes Antigone give this reason for refusing to
obey the unjust mandate of the king. *'Your laws are not those
of Jove nor of Justice who resides among the inferior deities. I
cannot believe that any edict of yours, mortal that you are, can
nullify the unwritten but unshaken laws, which were sanctioned
not yesterday nor the day before, but have flourished in every age,
and no one can tell how far back the date of their birth goes."

I04 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

The object of these citations is to show that from the very
beginning there existed a law which bound all men to obedience,
to show, moreover, that from the divine mind and from the divine
will have sprung the essential laws which govern all things, animate
and inanimate, and all according to tlie constituents of their indi-
vidual nature, inanimate beings by inflexible rules, purely animal
beings by instinct, man by moral obligations, which, while they
in no way influence him physically, put him under the moral
coercion to advance toward his development along lines worthy
of his freedom and his intelligence.

Law for man is his destiny here and hereafter. Law is his per-
fection. Law from the performance of his first responsible act
is an abiding presence with him. If he endeavor to disregard it,
which it is not in his power to do utterly, he will be punished
by the very reproach of that law rebuking him menacingly through
the voice of his conscience. It is not difficult to admit that one
of the first maxims to be inculcated is that law must be respected,
that it is never set aside without disaster and remorse, that it is
well for a man to obey the law willingly because it is bad to dis-
obey it willingly, because sooner or later, whether he will it or not,
obey it he must.

Pedagogy by the very nature of its office must recognize the
importance of law, must insist under all circumstances on that
importance being recognized by the child. But there is the rule!
Those who come under the ministrations of educators are reason-
able beings and they demand the why and the wherefore of all
things and they will not be put down by yea and nay. The age
which apotheosised the Ipse dixit is verily a thing of the past and
of a very distant past. Reasons are asked for by everyone and
for everything.

LAW los

Wo betide the pedagogue whose repertory is poorly stocked in
these times of incessant interrogation. Yet no teacher need be
dismayed, no teacher worthy of the name, no teacher who has
conscientiously prepared for the work to which he addresses him-
self. A reason and a satisfactory one can be given for everything,
especially for everything which revolves upon or concerns the
chiefest human interests. What principles can pedagogy advance
upon which to build up a respect for law or from which he may
deduce affirmations or negations in favor of its majesty and ite
obligatory power? There seems to be only one needed. Law is
the voice of authority, and all authority is God-given. God's right
is inalienable and undeniable. God's right to command men and
to compel men to obey other men legitimately placed over them.
In no other way can law be explained or understood. In no other
way can the norm of morality be established and on no other found-
ation can repose moral obligation.

Any system of philosophy which does not affirm the existence of
a God Creator, is powerless to rear a standard of morality and
powerless to lay down a basis of moral obligation. There is no
morality where there is no creator, there is no morality worthy
of the name or possessed of integrity without religion. A semblance
there may be, but whatever the semblance it is only a rag torn from
the standard of all goodness set up on the mountain in the Ten
Commands, and still floating like a glory over that Church which
is appointed as the sole teacher of mankind, and which alone lights
up the minds and strengthens the will in the direction of morality
and law.

IQ§ CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XXI. REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

Reward and punishment may be called the secular arm of the
majesty of law. Without them law is inefficacious to an alarming
degree. They uphold it and are its necessary adjunct. Take them
away and who obeys? The lawgiver who attaches no sanction to
his legislation is, for the masses, a sound and nothing more. There
is a solemn cant blatant in these days, in fact, in all days, which
proclaims that man should do the right thing and shun the wrong,
because right is right and wrong is wrong and therefore should be
done or should be avoided for their own sake alone.

George Eliot, it is recorded, in one of her solemn moments made
the sublime utterance that humanity has three watchwords: God,
immortality, duty. "There is no God," she continued, "there is no
immortality. The only thing left us is duty." She was as illogical
as she was unpragmatic. Deprive the race of God and you will
seek in vain for immortality. Cancel immortality and duty will be-
come a meaningless term, a mere catchword of frenzied feminin-
ity. Duty for duty's sake has never inspired noble deeds. It
wears the mien of unselfishness, but behind it there is inanity and
much smug conceit. One does one's duty because one's duty it is,
but one's duty it is because there is somewhere or other an authori-
tative legislator who has the right to lay down the law for us and
because we are under the moral necessity of barkening to His voice.

How long would the race persevere were duty, for its own dear
sake, the maxim of civic and domestic conduct? It is needless to
say that there is something unworthy of man in the attitude of him
who is led only by the hope of reward or by the fear of punishment.
Yet the man who obeys God because he is moved by apprehension

REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

107

or by hope of something present or future is certainly in no way
inferior to the man who submits because his reason tells him it is
a more beautiful thing to act ethically than otherwise. The one is
by implication a worshiper of a superior being, the other by infer-
ence kneels down to himself. When self-worship becomes a re-'
ligion then 'ware the world! Then farewell duty and order and
peace, and fling open the doors — fling them open, otherwise they
will be forced from their hinges — to let in all evils, to unkennel the
dogs of all the passions, and so destroy the principles of universal
justice and brotherly love and minimize all noble action. Thus the
great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and

"Leave not a wrack behind."

Altruism, as it is expounded, is another of those supposed magic
words which are to fill the souls of men and the world at large
with sweetness and light. It must be remembered that we are by
our very nature self-centered. The world has two motions. It
moves on its own axis and it revolves around the sun. So with
man: he rotates upon himself and his whole being circles around
the Creator. Without the sun the axial activity of the earth would
not be and without God the existence of man would be mythical
only. Hence this utter annihilation of self that is demanded by
altruism, independently of other considerations, is an impossibility.

The saints have loved God unselfishly, yet they in their own per-
sonality were the center and spring of that love — they loved and
not another. Even when they went to that mysterious degree of
self-stripping that they clamored to be anathema, to be wiped
out of the book of life for their brethren, it was their best and
most conscious self from which the magnificent sacrifice emanated-
And He, the Master, the Preceptor, the Peerless Pedagogue (for

io8 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

where was there such another teacher?) in the most sublime
discharge of duty, asked the Father why He had abandoned Him
and into His hands commended His spirit, for it was Christ and
not another who was humiliated and crushed and who died. He
died most surely for us, but it was He who consummated the
ineffable oblation and no other. The agent and his act are in-
separable.

Punishment and reward are influences in all deliberate action.
Man is so constituted that he must be either enticed by the one or
deterred by the other. So the nature of man and the reputation of
the lawgiver and his concern for his own legislation are all involved
in the sanction which accompanies his mandates. This is true of all
law, divine, human, natural and positive. The dealing out of pun-
ishment and reward is no small part of a teacher's task, and it
works either for the advantage or disadvantage of both master and
pupil, and so genuine pedagogy calls for a sound treatment of their
necessity, nature and condition. Any species of fantastic views in
the matter is to be relegated to the most distant background.

It is safe to be convinced from the start that the class in which
penalties are not attached to infraction of law or in which rewards
are not offered for application and orderly conduct is a class which
exists nowhere except in Utopia or in the unpractical brain of
dreamy theorists. Who is to administer punishment and in whose
hands is to lie the distribution of premiums are questions of no little
moment. There is the larger problem of corporal castigation which
is calling for a solution in these days of ours. There was very
little difficulty in its settlement during a long past which is not very
far away. The abolition of it will not lead to an abiding verdict.
It will come up again and again, for if there is one sure conclusion
which the forbidding of corporal punishment of one kind or of

REWARD AND PUNISHMENT tog

another must necessarily compel the world to reach, it is the con-
clusion that suffering of some kind must be inflicted upon refractory
boys and girls, otherwise there will be dismay and defeat in the
army of teachers, and indolence and insolence and riot and disorder
in the ranks of the scholars.

Sentimentalism is not real sentiment, it is only a counterfeit
thereof. It is mawkish. It is a mere weakling and from it can
never spring a guiding influence on a principle of salvation. When
a teacher is convinced that his laws and the laws of his school or
college must have a sanction be must study not only his own feel-
ings, but the character of the children entrusted to him. This
analysis will reveal the first important fact which should never be
lost sight of: the fact that all un(ier him must not be treated alike,
that some are helped rather by reward than by punishment, that
some can not be punished at all.

Probably the most impressive as well as the most effective mode
of discouraging laziness and bad conduct is to take away some of
the ordinary privileges of school routine. This suggests many
varieties of procedure and, while helpful in the matter of study and
discipline, caters very innocently to the feelings of the sentimental-
ist, for whom the best corrective is the handing over to him or to her
for just one school day a class of healthy boys or girls. A teacher
while under the obligation of administering some or other penalty is
surer of his success when his determination is rather toward reward.
Reward and punishment must go hand in hand. All punishment
would demoralize an institution just as no punishment would pro-
duce the same result.

There is nothing in the teacher so manifest to the lynx eye of the
pupil as the motive which controls when the sanction is being
executed. If the teacher is moved by anger, if it is love of himself

no CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

and not a desire for order which urges, if he is bound to get the
best of his disciple, if he is partial, if he is not animated by the
strictest spirit of justice, then it were better for him that he had not
usurped the vocation of pedagogue and it were better for^the stu-
dent likewise. Strongly and sweetly is the motto for all disciplin-
arians.

MANNERS III

XXII. MANNERS

Manners, like apparel, "oft proclaim the man." In fact we are
drawn to or repelled by our fellows more on account of their
demeanor than of anything else which their exterior may hide
or reveal. For this reason it is almost impossible to overstate the
very great importance of cultivating deportment. Lord Chester-
field hardly ranks among the safe mentors of young or old. But
his experience, whether good or bad, has moved his pen to write
unmistakable truths. "Manners," he says, "must adorn knowledge
and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough dia-
mond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity and also
for its intrinsic value, but it will never be worn nor shine, if it is
not polished."

We lavish a great deal of forbearance on the rough diamond, but
it is not difficult to perceive that if the roughness were removed it
would be better for all and in the long run; if the edges remain
we lose sight of the gem and cease to be patient, and perhaps go
to the length of suspecting the genuineness of the stone. Again
there is a tendency to admit that it makes very little difference
what a man's manners may be, that the only thing to be taken into
account is what the man is. This is a dubiously true averment. There
is truth in it, but it does not state the whole truth. Of course one is
only what he is. Yet it must not be forgotten that man's manners
are a part of himself and they must be reckoned with in every at-
tempt to totalize an individual. If they are good they are to be
included in his measurement; if they are bad they have to be
deducted.

Moreover, most men, in fact all men with whom there is no

112 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

prolonged intercourse, are indexed to us by their method of carry-
ing themselves exteriorly and by that only. Besides, in the main,
talk as much as one pleases of the rough diamond variety of our
species, one is on the average very nearly what he appears. There
is a psychological connection between matter and mind, body and
soul. The interior generally reflects itself on the exterior on ac-
count of this very intimate union between body and soul.

It must be admitted, likewise, that manners are in some cases, and
may always be used as, a mask to screen hideous moral delinquen-
cies. This does not militate against the cultivation of politeness,
but only against abuse. Anything may be abused. One may put
to a bad use even learning itself. This science of pedagogy has
suffered agonies and in many instances gives, in the senseless
inanities it upholds, evidence of the terrible ordeal through which
it has passed at the hand of ignorant and cruel and debasing
agencies.

Yes, manners must, by no means, be neglected. Some are born
gentle, some achieve gentleness, some have gentleness thrust upon
them. The schoolroom will divide itself into these three groups.
It is with the last group chiefly that the struggle is on, but it is a
fight worth the fighting, for education calls for manners and those
who have no manners must for the sake of their fellows have man-
ners thrust upon them. Those whose gentleness is native will need
encouragement in order not to degenerate or to succumb to the
influence of a lowering environment.

"Since every Jack became a gentleman
There's many a gentle person made a Jack."

It is hard to bear the grand old name of gentleman without abuse
— a name which is "defamed by every charlatan, and soiled with all

MANNERS

"3

ignoble use." There have been many definitions of the term "gentle-
man" given and when the true one is found we will discover the
true meaning of "manners." Probing the subject as deeply as it is
allowed us we will find that as there is no life in the body from
which the soul has departed, so there are no genuine manners
without an inner principle to give them being first, and then vitality,
and finally form and beauty. The gentle mind by gentle deeds is
known and there will be no gentle deeds without the gentle mind.

It is incontrovertible, therefore, that manners can be built upon
a man's interior only. So we are brought, as in every matter apper-
taining to education we must be brought, we are brought to the
inevitable truth, the inexorable truth, that mind culture alone is not
sufficient, that the soul, that is the will, that is the heart, must not
be left untouched by pedagogy.

Once more we are comforted with the dominant thought of these
papers, the thought that all education is imperfect without moral
training, and that all beauty of living as well as of seeming must
spring from that comeliness which can be born of man's loyalty to
the suggestions of religion which speak to man of his attitude
toward himself and toward his fellows as well as toward his God.
There is no gentleman possible — ^no gentleman in the very highest,
in the ideal sense of the word, without the influence of the religious
principle.

Cardinal Newman has essayed the definition of the gentleman and
how successful his attempt has been is attested by critics no matter
what their denominational bias. Summarily, the great ecclesiastic
says that "a gentleman is one who never inflicts pain, who carefully
avoids whatever may cause a jar or jolt in the minds of those with
whom he is cast. He is tender toward the bashful, gentle toward
the distant, and merciful toward the absurd. He is never mean or

114 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

little, has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing
motives to those wHo interfere with him and interprets everything
for the best." This is his idea of the one v^ho is nature's gentle-
man, whose comportment is based on merely human foundations.

But how long will a man unaided by religious motives persevere
in this enviable attitude toward men. All these lineaments may be
traceable in the exterior and as long as they are observable the
possessor of them will be considered flawless. It is to be feared
that if the incentives of action are not in accord with the act itself,
it is to be feared that in private and unguarded moments the polish
will not survive the attack of passion or of the brunt of failure or
the rival's success. The repression of self is the only guarantee of
manners, perfect and abiding. Manners call for constant sacrifice
of self. The Sermon on the Mount is the best manual of social
polish and culture which has ever been given to the world. Christ
was the gentleman beyond compare. Isaias predicted of Him
(xlii, I ) : "The Lord will put his spirit upon him and he shall show
judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not contend nor cry out, neither
shall any man hear his voice in the streets. The bruised reed he
shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not extinguish." Here is
the perfect idea of what genuine manners can effect in an unman-
nerly world because it insists on the action of that spirit from whom
alone all perfection springs. Pedagogy must demand the genuine
in everything. It must allow of nothing superficial, it must insist
energetically on everything being thorough.

There is no force stronger in education than the force of example.
The Great Preceptor commanded nothing which He had not done
Himself. How potent the professor can be in his intercourse with
his pupils is beyond the need of being illustrated. He who from his
chair proclaims by his demeanor the qualities of a true gentleman

MANNERS 115

or of a true gentle lady will speak victories. Meekness in its splen-
did Gospel meaning and as it touches the heart of Christ, modesty,
self-control, honesty of purpose, veracity of statement are the equip-
ment of the man of manners, and the tutor who possesses them will
possess that land of infinite possibilities, the heart land of those
whom he instructs; without them the tide will come in his affairs
which will sweep him and his to shoals and rocks and things un-
utterable.

Ii6 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XXIII. CONCEIT

It would be no easy task to learn what view popular pedagogy,
in the light of the easy principles it follows, takes of the frailties of
human nature. It would be a simpler performance to prove that it
scarcely touches them. In fact, outside of plans of instruction, it
formulates no method whereby mind and heart may be purged of the
perilous stuif which must surely damage both, where those systems
have been allowed to prevail that are unbaptized and have not been
dipped in the waters of Christianity. Mental disease, especially
when the sickness is a moral infection, is rarely if ever treated.
Train the mind, pour into it all the information procurable from
any and every source, organize the seething elements, eliminate chaos
and diffuse light, and, lo! the work of pedagogy is done, and, lo!
the child is formed and ready to encounter any enemy however
strong !

Illumination of the mind and nimbleness of the faculties is the
only goal it seems ambitious to reach. In its pharmacopoeia it holds
no tonic for the soul. To know, and to know, and again to know, is
the chief, if not the only, doctrine which it preaches fiom its pulpit.
A completely fashioned intellect is its principal aim. It comes to
humanity with the proclamation that knowledge will make men, like
gods, able to pluck from the tree good and evil together, caring
little how much the evil contaminates the good, caring less that
the evil is more palatable than the good. It will inculcate most
assuredly the need of manners, but it is empty handed where there
is question of what is more needful than manners, more needful
than anything that attracts the attention of men. It is the bark that

CONCEIT

117

it contemplates the strengthening of, and it is reckless of the rich,
wholesome sap, without which there is no health in bark or leaf or
branch or blossom or fruit. It forgets that the soul must wear a
royal garb as well as the body, and that it is from the interior that
all force must flow to the exterior.

It says, of course, be not proud, be not conceited, be not selfish,
but it gives no lessons in humility and brotherly love and self-
sacrifice. This weakness, or rather this incompleteness, it very sel-
dom imputes to itself, because it is unaware of the true value of
things, and in addition knows not where to look for the all important
gift of discernment. It is obvious that while it pays no attention to
many things of moment it is indirectly making itself responsible for
more than a few of the characteristics which, in these times, impair
their efficacy for civilizing purposes, and render powerful agents of
evil to the commonwealth those who are sent out with approval from
schools and colleges everywhere.

Manners are an indispensable requisite for comfortable living, but
they mean a higher living than is existence if tiiey are the outcome
of mental balance and moral soundness. The rule of the golden
mean applies to them as it does to other human conditions. Man-
ners easily degenerate into mannerisms, which, if excessive, produce
the harlequin and the mountebank, and which, if not, generate the
faddist and the bore, who, in a step, loses all politeness and becomes
the boor. Conceit conduces potently to the causation of these ex-
crescences. It is very much abroad in the land. It sits like a grin-
ning ape upon so many shoulders and chatters in the speech of so
many tongues.

To be in conceit with oneself is to be out of conceit with the rest
of the world, or rather to find the rest of the world out of conceit
with us. It is a little failing, but like the little acorn, from it comeS

Ii8 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

a monstrous growth. It makes us laugh, but soon the laugh changes
into derision and contempt. Perhaps the easier way of getting at an
understanding of this moral ailment is to ask ourselves searchingly
why a conceited man is always a disgusting, or if not a disgusting a
laughable, spectacle for us. The source of his conceit is undoubtedly
his opinion of himself. This opinion is not always an exaggerated
one ; generally, however, it is. Its basis is a desire for the praise of
others, and there is no mistaking the fact that he is eager for it
because he considers it due to him. In pursuit of commendation it
is that he uses the language and does the deeds which compel ridi-
cule. It is silliness unpardonable on his part, but it is not always
evidence of brainlessness.

Some able individuals have been conceited and have in many in-
stances drawn down upon themselves the sneers of their fellows.
Let us be honest. We perhaps vent our spleen on these harmless
ones because of a treacherous inclination on our part to resent any-
one thinking himself better than we are. This sentiment is a
natural one, but not of the best. We assume that a man who deems
his qualifications superior to ours and shows this attitude, is pitying
us because we are not as great as he. This cuts and hurts, and in
our supposed righteous indignation we find ourselves guilty of the
same estimation of ourselves which we call overweening vanity
in him.

If only someone would give us the gift to see ourselves as others
see us, most surely it would free us from many a blunder and from
many a foolish notion regarding ourselves and others. Yet con-
ceit is not manly — nay, it is not human. Why should the spirit of
mortal be proud ? Pride is responsible for vanity and all the conceit
that has been witnessed since the beginning of things. Where does
pedagogy find or present a remedy for pride or selfishness, which

CONCEIT 119

lies still deeper ? As to the conceited person, it were better to leave
him alone.

George Eliot says: "I have never any pity for conceited people
because I think they carry their own comfort with them." We are
not obligated to pity them. The duty that lies before the pedagogue
is to teach his disciples the true value of things, that if the world
were to rain down all its plaudits upon us it would change us noth-
ing. The dwarf on the highest hill is still a dwarf, and no elevation
will make him a giant. What is said of the world is to be said of the
individual. No thinking on his part makes him other than he is.

St. Paul teaches (I Cor. iv) that all distinction comes from on
high. "For who distinguisheth thee ? Or what hast thou that thou
hast not received? And if thou hast received why dost thou glory
as if thou hadst not received it ?" This is the magic thought which
helps man keep himself where he belongs. The fact that all we have
has been given us, that there is nothing, strictly speaking, our own
but our sins, is a fact which when allowed to penetrate our mind
will go far toward calming troubled breasts and subduing swelling
minds. "Lowliness is the base of every virtue, and he who goes
the lowest builds the safest." The sagest of men have subscribed
to this doctrine "that no man will learn anything at all, unless he
first learns humility." This virtue endears us to God and to man.
It puts a man in his place, and the man who is not in his place where
he belongs is the veriest misfit, and jolts others and is jolted
himself.

"Humility, that low, sweet root
From which all heavenly virtues shoot."

All this is true of the preceptor as well as of those over whom
he has charge. Example goes very far in plucking up conceit. The

I20 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGf

greatest learning has been so frequently associated with a lowly
opinion of oneself. Pride is the easiest depth for a man to fall into,
and humility is the hardest virtue to practise. It can never exist
where irreligion abides. It can never be taught by any system of
education save that which is the handmaiden of religion and looks
upon God as the Alpha and Omega of all things.

RESPECT FOR OTHERS

XXIV. RESPECT FOR OTHERS

J2I

There are very few human breasts in which every spark of respect
for others is extinguished. It is alive even in the mind of the man
who has lost all respect for himself. It is a sentiment to which
much of peace and order and happiness in life is due. It is a senti-
ment which must be developed, because the large issues of life, and
surely the large issues of education, depend upon it. Whatever con-
duces to maintaining it contributes in no little degree to the con-
servation and purification of civilization. What is respected will
not be overthrown or disregarded, and will by its very nature be a
barrier against any threatening or malign influence. Without it
education is rather a curse than a blessing.

It is in bad taste, this finding fault with the times of which we are
a part, but only when it proceeds from a carping spirit or from
motives that are unworthy. Still it is not necessarily pessimism,
or if it be, it is of a kind that spurs on and up. Only the pessimism
which cries wo! wo! without hope, is dangerous, just as the op-
timism which says, Well done! indiscriminately, is a foe to be
struggled against in season and out of season. Censure, after the
fashion of a scold, is intolerable, but when it is in the expression of
sympathy and encouragement then it, too, is to be respected.

It can not be denied that to-day respect is not the vigorous factor
that it was, that it is not the prevailing spirit. We may ask, and ask
in the fear that the reply must be negative, whether the young re-
spect the old, inferiors their superiors, children their parents, wives
their husbands, husbands their wives, the multitude their religion,
the world its God? Here in America the Old World way of re-
spect, and in the Old World the old-time way of respect, for other

122 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

men and things have undergone strange mutations. Not in the
fashion of the day did" the fathers of the repubHc interpret those
watchwords of the race: life, Hberty and the pursuit of happiness.
To-day it is life, any kind of life, and at any cost. To-day it is
liberty without respect for the liberty of others. To-day it is the
pursuit of happiness no matter on what road or with what means.

Respect for ideals is fast waning, and anything that savors of
lofty aspirations is called quixotic. It is beyond cavil that respect
conserves, and want of it annihilates, and disrespect covers with
insult. If a husband respects not his wife she becomes to him as if
she were no wife. If a child has no respect for its parents they are
to him as if they were not his parents. It is this annihilating force
which takes the place of vanished respect that is the most regrettable
feature. The man who has no respect for God has no God; who
has no respect for religion has no religion. When the world falls
into this slough it is very low indeed, and no one can tell how soon
its best institutions will be swamped.

What is it brings an individual to have no more respect for things
that are of the greatest moment to himself and to all his fellows —
no more respect for religion, no more respect for authority, no more
respect for the obligations which flow from the essential relations
and conditions of existence? Is he to blame or are others? The
answer to this can be given only by the one concerned. But let
he himself be to blame or let others be at fault, his symptoms are
dangerous and remedies must be applied.

The causes for the disease are superficial, many and various, but
close investigation will reduce them to two or three. Some eye
religion askance because they are not satisfied with its ministers.
It is a swift process this identifying the minister and the religion,
but oftentimes sufficient data are not at hand, and it is always

RESPECT FOR OTHERS 123

illogical. Environment plays an active role. The abdication of the
principles which sweeten humanity is more contributory than many
other causes, and there is nothing which leads more swiftly to judg-
ments against a man's character than his proclamation that Church
and God are mythical, medieval and superannuated ideas, and alto-
gether opposed to that grotesque thing which is called the world's
progress.

Above all, systems of education are censurable in this relation.
These systems in a general way may be styled Godless ones. They
have no place for the Creator, save perhaps on the inscriptions over
their portals. Their very existence is a disclaimer against all moral
training which they are not permitted, except in the most indirect
way, even to hint at. It belongs not to their commission, a depar-
ture from which would involve them in endless difficulties. In how
many plans of studies, as afforded by the various educational es-
tablishments which dot the country, is there provided a scheme
which will inculcate those theories, or rather those really scientific
principles, without which there is no security against the inroad of
erroneous views, which sap the mental and moral foundations of
the land !

It is this propagation of ideas, so destructive of the first notions
relative to the nature of the world and of man and of God, which is
the well spring of this absence of respect for others that in so many
instances we are called upon to deplore. God is not. Why think
of Him, why consider Him, why respect Him? God banished as
a useless idea from the thoughts of peoples, what basis of authority
is possessed ? Forms of government may be legitimized by the con-
sensus of men, but not government itself, not authority. No one can
compel obedience save Him who by His creative act has a right to
our submission.

124

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

There is no guarantee for right government but in the fact that
all authority is from God. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and
unto God what is God's, but Caesar will never receive what is his
from the one who does not give to God what is His. It is the same
with parental authority. It is the same wherever we find some in
command and others subject to that command. It holds for all the
relations of life. It holds in Church and in state, in the family and
in the class room.

Respect for others, in no matter what capacity they may be found,
will never be manifested unless the principles of morality — of mo-
rality which is undivorced from religion, of morality which springs
from a recognition of divine authority — are upheld. That deference
which is so necessary will be compulsory only, and might will usurp
the place of right, and rulers will be tyrants and soldiers minions
and the people slaves. Nobody has respect for another continuously
if he respects not himself. Nobody can respect himself who is not
true to the truth that is in him, especially to that ineffaceable truth
which asserts the divinity of his origin and morally brings him to
his knees before his Maker and fills his heart with the deference
that is due to every rational creature coming from the hands of the
Almighty and according to the degree in which circumstances con-
trolled by an infinite Providence has legitimately placed him. This
is so simple and so elementary, but when fundamental ideas are fast
vanishing and come to so many as a new unheard something, then
is it time to cry halt, and remind pedagogy of its paramount re-
sponsibility.

DEGENERACY— HEREDITY

XXV. DEGENERACY — HEREDITY

125

Heredity shares largely the attention of the world to-day. Some
very striking occurrences have been brought to light of which a
basis has been made for theories which still remain theories and
will never be anything more. Theories are not to be scoffed at, and
are to be neglected only when they parade as demonstrated con-
clusions have been found useless in the fields of science. Theories
degenerate and decay, as may be the lot of everything limited in
this world of change. Degeneracy is a salient fact, and most of all
in the moral order. There are those, and they are not a few, who
leave the Father^s home and never return. There are prodigals who,
tired of the husks and the far-off country and the company that
sinks them and debases them, go back to the fireside where they
spent happy hours, the memory of which in some mysterious way
always clings and not seldom draws away from the depths and
stations on the heights.

In no way does a man so impoverish himself in his gifts and
qualities, so impoverish himself in his own eyes and in those of his
fellows, as when he becomes unrecognizable as the one who set out
on life's morning march, when his bosom was young, so full of
promise and so hopeful of victory, when he is so far unrecognizable
that his own will not know him, that his name is erased from all
tlie family records and his portraits are all turned to the wall and
no mention of him must ever be made in the paternal halls. If this
is a deserved fate, then indeed must he be a degenerate. Yet let
him be fallen as low as possible, there are many who would stoop
to pick him up, out of the charity in their hearts, and because they
know there are lower depths into which he might fall, and because

126 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

they know not the day that they themselves might kennel with
the poor lame dogs that have to be helped over stiles. God bless
them for the thought and for the deed — not degenerates they, but
princes in God's own household.

It is not of evolutionary degeneracy that this chapter speaks, but of
a worse kind, the degeneracy that makes will and mind, and, through
both, body to deteriorate. Degeneracy is loss of birthright, the loss
of all that has been given a man by right of natural descent ; it is a
falling away from typal condition. It means one born noble becom-
ing a serf, one born wealthy becoming a pauper, one born strong
becoming a weakling, and, last of all, one born a man becoming a
beast. It is against this last catastrophe that pedagogy must do
battle. If it is unable to prevent degeneracy, or lessen or prevent
its consequences, if it can not help toward repristination, then it has
no place among the works of men ; then it itself, alas ! is degenerate.

More censurable than degeneracy itself is a system that harbors
the microbes of deterioration. It is the end of education to de-
velop a man in all that he is, to strengthen body, mind and will.
Truth is the only nourishment of the mind ; virtue — that is, the virile
combat against all the advances of moral corruption — is the life of
the will, and health of body is so easily, as it is so frequently, im-
paired, by weakening the mind through error and falsehood and by
not proclaiming to the will the law of liberty which keeps the whole
man unspotted of the world. It is not a peculiar felicity, this being
obligated, no matter what the subject introduced, to insist upon the
most fundamental and simplest formulas of all education. It can
not be helped. Every time the same disease is in process, so often
must the same antitoxin be administered. What marvelous strides
have been made in sanitation, and how grateful must suffering
humanity be for all that has been done to make the body sound.

DEGENERACY— HEREDITY 1 2 7

The old-time adage was : A sound mind in a sound body. It calla
for sound mind and sound body, not for sound body only or for
sound mind only, but mind is first, and if sacrifice of either is in-
evitable, then let body and not mind be immolated. A sound body
can go far toward making a sound mind; witness all the triumphs
in the field of surgery and medicine. The mind which is denied the
truth is an infection and works resistlessly in making children
and adults degenerates. That physical deterioration is in a very
large measure due to heredity is admitted. This has given rise to
theories, more or less orthodox, not merely from a religious but
from every point of view.

An attempt has been made to discover the laws of heredity and
to give them fixity. Scientific certainty on this point will not be
reached for many long ages. No ratiocination, no syllogism can be
conclusive on this head until induction has traveled over a region
of facts, practically infinite in extent. Nature is constant, it is true,
but one solitary act of freakishness and she puzzles a whole world
of honest searchers. Were some of the decisions pronounced by
judges estimably competent on this subject to prevail, then the
race might take lessons from the dreamy Orient and lie down and
await without any fear of responsibility for inevitable consequences.
It is the utter helplessness of the individual and the utter hopeless-
ness implied that make some of its supposed laws such a cause of
degeneracy. There is certainly at times consequences of heredity
which make the life struggle constant and call upon the offspring
for a heroicity that seems exorbitant. Whatever moral burden is
laid by descent upon the child it is incontestable that somewheie or
other on God's earth there is refreshment and easement for him,
and that Providence will always see to it that he is not tried beyond

128 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

his strength and that he has within himself a potency of will which
reHgion may render indomitable.

It is in questions like these that the barrenness of science is made
apparent. There is a pedagogy which, only partly awake to the
nature of man, adopts without examination sometimes all the con-
clusions of incomplete research, and so deems useless any auxiliary
that claims that only man's mind is teachable and that man's will can
not be trained and must be left to fight with the resources with
which parentage has equipped it. Such a notion is not only un-
scientific, but is criminal as well and amenable for all the misery,
weakness, turpitude and iniquity which in all ages have engaged the
attention of Church and State and evoked the utterances of socialism
and anarchy.

If we are told that pedagogy has no time and no mission to re-
dress these evils, then let the avowal be a public and an honest one,
and let the schoolboy and collegian look elsewhere for relief from
these intolerable conditions. Parents are answerable for the educa-
tion to which they commit their children. Parents have in many
places, the world over, the selection of the institutions to which
they send their children. In the discharge of their obligations their
duty is clear, and in the light of these principles their duty is of
superlative value. The most superficial study of heredity will prove
to fathers and to mothers what traits they bequeath to those who
spring from them. From this knowledge will come to them the con-
viction that in some degree they are responsible for many of the
tendencies, and so should be animated with a determination to
diminish the consequences and to make comparatively easy, if not
pleasant, the warfare which those whom they have brought into
the world must wage. If this warfare is not waged triumphantly,
then with them heredity has left as a legacy degeneracy.

TASTE

129

XXVI. TASTE

Taste is the perception and enjoyment of what is choice. It in-
cludes therefore, in its object ehgibility, and in its possessor selec-
tion. The two faculties which are its congeners are mind and will,
and the more clearly they perceive and the more keenly they enjoy,
the more perfect is in them the quality of taste. And what has
pedagogy to do with taste? The question ought to be. What is
there that pedagogy has not to do with taste? A child left to its
own resources in this matter, a child whose taste has not been de-
veloped or has been allowed to run wild, is at the mercy of every
charlatan who has a theory to propound, or creed to establish, or a
cause to uphold.

Where taste has not been cultivated, education, no matter what its
nature, is rudderless. It has no canon whereby to adjudicate in
all matters which make appeal to sense or reason. Taste properly
trained is as safe a guide in many things as instinct is in an animal.
When of a man it is justifiable to state that he has no taste, or, what
is nearly the same, that his taste is bad ; then such a one is marked,
his judgments are deemed valueless and his efforts will be impotent
in the whole region — how vast that region is ! — in the whole region
where taste is umpire. It has been held as proverbially irrefutable
that no dispute should be allowed in questions of taste : de gustibus
non est disputandum.

Like all sayings which for ages pass current among men, thif
maxim is susceptible of a twofold interpretation, both contradictory,
one of which only can be true. Either taste is a monitor in all dis-
cernings or it is not. When we say a monitor in all distinguishings

I30

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

we mean in all that belong to the province of taste. That it is a
standard of genuineness ^eems patent.

The masterpieces of all times, whether in literature or art, received
their high position, and have maintained the supremacy even when
some (and how few they are!) revolutionary minds rebelled against
the supremacy and sometimes endeavored to argue them out of
existence, them or their reputed or their accredited authors. The
verdict was given long before there appeared in the world sys-
tematized rules and clever analyses aiming at proving that where the
popular taste had placed them, there they belonged. Before scien-
tific adjustment there had been an enjoyment of their beauty and a
perception of their proportions which gave them the seal of im-
mortality which has been guaranteed by all generations of men
since. There have been disputes, not about their general excellence,
but relative to minor details. Disputes continue, but the primal
taste has been rapturously sanctioned. In matters of highly matured
taste, that is, in matters which enter into the vision of balanced
minds, there has been and there will be variance.

In this sense it must be granted that tastes may be compared, and
tastes may be modified, and tastes may, in expression, be less or
more enthusiastic or condemnatory, and hence taste may, both in its
object as well as in itself, be a center of heated argument, and so
there may be a dispute about taste. There is bad taste and good
taste. There is a taste which lauds what is inferior and minimizes
or execrates what is superior. There is a healthy and there is a
diseased taste. This very well known fact makes compulsory de-
bates on the subject of taste. There are tastes which are the out-
come of habits, social, intellectual, moral and religious. This proves
that there must at times be a war of taste against taste. There is a
national taste which we may not like, because it likes us not, and

TASTE

131

SO, though we respect it, we understand how easily and rationally
its existence might foment very learned and very perplexing dis-
cussions, not to say quarrels. The proverb is rather a slur on the
race. It is tantamount to saying that it makes no difference what
a man likes or dislikes, or that it is useless to argue against it be-
cause reason and logic are very secondary, in a word, that nearly all
of us are beyond the reach of being convinced, and so if we got our
desert motley should be our wear.

There most assuredly is a possibility where so much variety of
worth exists of discerning the difference between values and of
crowning what is royal, whether it be in literature or art. The
definition that taste is the perception and enjoyment of what is
choice admitted, it follows that taste is susceptible of many degrees,
depending on the intelligence of the appreciator. From this flows,
as a consequence, that the more keen a mind is rendered by training
in the direction of discernment, the more perfect will taste be. Surely,
one might say, surely in a subject like the present there can be no
denying that the simplest form of pedagogy is advanced enough to
do something toward taste-cultivation without being harassed with
the repetition, likely to become nauseating, of the view that
morality is essential. This protest is equivalent to a statement that
morality or religion has nothing to do with taste, that one may be
considered a safe critic of books, and of marbles, and of paintings,
and of music, without summoning the principals of faith to one's
assistance.

All beauty that is genuine beauty must be examined by the judg-
ment before it is enjoyed. Sudden rapture is not unusual, but
along with it is connoted some reason for its springing into being.
An act of the intelligence is always implied, though so swift are
emotions that occasionally they render us powerless to discover im-

132 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

mediately the why and the wherefore of their awakening. If there
be no mental operation accompanying our transports, either they are
mere sensations and will abide in that lower zone, or they are im-
possible of analysis and so can not be a joy forever. In other
words, there are principles which explain taste and furnish the
reasons why taste is good and bad. There is a literature that is so
execrable that he who reads is verily wallowing in a sensual stye
while perusing. A taste for such productions grows upon what it
feeds and becomes like unto its nourishment. It is a taste which
soon converts its possessor into one maw, ever open for one kind of
food and insatiable. It is a depraving taste. It assimilates its
victim into itself and leaves him ruined in all his prosperity, blighted
in all his faculties.

"Prostrate the beauteous ruin lies, and all
That shared its shelter perish in its fall"

How is pedagogy going to eradicate or check a taste so pernicious
as that ? What principles will it invoke ? If the pedagogy is of the
earth, earthy, a pedagogy built upon materialism, what will this
debauchee listen to in the way of corrective or inspiring maxims?
Tell him whither he is hurrying he will answer scoffingly and
logically: There is no hereafter, no God, no immortality, there is
only the grave. How colorless such a system of education in the
presence of man*s majesty stripped of its regal garb and clinging
to all that is sensual or ravenously as a wild beast. What is said of
taste in the above relation may be said of taste in all its ramifica-
tions, of the taste that enjoys infidelity, untruth, dishonesty, im-
morality, domestic and social, for taste is called upon to assert
itself regarding all these modifiers of human activity.

COUNTRY

133

XXVII. COUNTRY

"Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's and truth's."

So spake the great Cardinal of the eighth Henry when his for-
tune had touched its nadir and had taught him, after much bitter-
ness, the hard but salutary lesson that had he but served his God
with half the zeal with which he served his king He would not, in
his age, have left him at the mercy of his enemies. So full of incen-
tives to high aspirations and high deeds is one's country that where
pedagogy fails to develop the rich resources it contains for the
up-bringing of the child, it is censurable to a degree that is not easy
to put in words.

There is something mysterious in the link which binds a man to
his native land. It creates a love which it is not easy to diminish,
and, in almost all cases, impossible to destroy. When it departs
from the heart there is lost a strength which can not safely be
dispensed with, and its absence lends to crimes amany, the crown-
ing one of which, treason, seems to include all other delinquencies,
and to call down on the guilty one the execration of all his fellows.
Parricide and treasc*^ are moral enormities which cry to God and to
man for the most summary veng'^ance. Love for country finds a
chord in every heart, and a chord that is responsive not only in the
man but almost in the very child. For that reason patriotism is an
emotion which is awakened as easily as any other, and perhaps
more quickly than any other.

There is, however, a patriotism that is unto wisdom and a

134 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

patriotism that is tinged with folly exciting ridicule or indignation in
sensible breasts. There is a patriotism which blinds and a pa-
triotism which causes the scales to drop from vision, a patriotism
which hurries on to excess, and a patriotism which is willing to
compromise because it is enlightened and looks beyond the present
moment. The French have coined a term which puts a bar sinister
on patriotism of a certain kind, the term is chauvinism. It applies to
one who is absurdly jealous of his country's honor or puffed up
with an exaggerated sense of national glory, who is an extravagant
glorifier of his country. Chauvin, one of Bonaparte's soldiers, ac-
quired such notoriety bocause he was a type of men who work
mischief by unreasoning, irascible and vainglorious patriotism.

There is much of this brand of patriotism observable in all coun-
tries. This is mob patriotism. There is a so-called love of coun-
try which is more pernicious — a love of country which is excessive.
It is blatant. It hounds on to measures which have not in them
a germ of welfare for the common good. Probed, it often re-
veals not attachment to country but unseeing selfishness, it reveals
ambition either for place or for wealth. It uses the country as a
stepping-stone to encompass private ends. The device, when
properly deciphered, which it carries on its banner is ego first and
last and all the time. It is a concretion of the maxim so much
used by so many who spend all their eloquence on reprobating it,
the maxim that the end justifies the means.

Those who lived through the two wars which disturbed the peace
of the United States remember how unblushingly in nearly all
ranks this execrable principle was the mainspring of what seemed
heroic devotion to country. It is eminently the duty of those to
whom the training of the young is committed to inculcate those
truths without which patriotism will be merely emotion or listless,

COUNTRY 135

or awakened only when some emergency arises that compels uni-
versal activity.

The first training of the citizen of the future is begun where
nature intended it to begin, that is, in the bosom of the family, and
the longer the home education the better is it for the child and the
State. What a society jungle the home is in so many instances ex-
perience is there to demonstrate. A jungle in which human beings
are reared to become beasts of prey, eager and ready to tear and to
devour. How hard it is for the country to round them up, to de-
prive them of their fangs and to place them where their fierce wild
passions will not be tamed, but where, for a brief or a long period,
they will be beyond the power of working the havoc to which they
are incited by all the evil instincts of a nature which the home,
such as it was, rendered ravenous, and which the school, such as it
was, only developed into a more highly developed agency for evil
of the most formidable and destructive description.

Nor is this true only of homes where squalor and vice prevailed,
but just as true of those who left palatial dwellings wherein no
morality, or a morality constructed by a surface of respectability,
was considered as a sufficient passport to the college or university,
which was not a whit better, and thence to social life and social
duties and the tremendous responsibilities of citizenship. What
manner of patriotism will such an ancestry give birth to and such a
credit nourish?

We upbraid our immigration officers because they throw open
the gates of this favored land to so many who are unfit, through ig-
norance or through vice, to consort with its favored citizens. It is
wise that these commissioners should be held, and strictly held, to
their obligation. It is also wise, while we are looking to our borders,
to look to the gates of home, and of school and of college and of

136 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

university, and see to it that therefrom not merely undesirable, but
absolutely dangerous, citizens do not emerge. Yet the duty of
pedagogy is dazzlingly clear in its simplicity. There is no patriotism
without peace, and a great teacher has written that peace is the
tranquillity of order — an exhalation of that regularity that binds
rulers to the ruled and all to one another in that sapient charity
which respects feelings and rights and authority.

The old Cardinal found a safe way out of his wreck to rise in, and,
in the wisdom purchased at the price of all he cherished and toiled
for, he has mapped out the path of true patriotism: "Be just and
fear not, let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country*s, thy God's
and truth's." "Love thyself last." "Corruption wins not more
than honesty." No patriot, therefore, who does not prize his coun-
try more than himself, God more than himself, truth more than him-
self, is to be relied on. When these principles are acknowledged,
then will the country prosper and grow great.

A country is what its people are. If they are small, selfish, mean
and debased, it is small, selfish, mean and debased. The more men
contribute of their best selves to their country, the more glorious
that country becomes and the more it will impart of all its greatness
to every man, woman and child within its borders. Elementary all
this, but elementary does not mean trifling or superficial ; it means
the flesh and blood and bone of all doctrine that is saving, of all
systems that uplift. It means fundamental principles, and funda-
mental principles are indispensable. Let it be remembered that
the mind of man grasps these simplicities easily, but to see is not
enough, but to be doers is what is needed. To do is the task, and
needs strength, and to what fountain of strength, springing up into
eternal life, does modern pedagogy point?

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE

XXVIII. RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE

137

The world forgets the lesson which it has learned and for
which it has paid an enormous if not an exhorbitant price. The ex-
perience of the ages has eloquently preached one truth, and that
truth is that there is no explaining the universe without God. In
the Book of Books the statements: "In the beginning God created
heaven and earth, made us, and not we ourselves ;" "I am the Lord
that made all things, that alone stretched out the heavens, that
established the earth, and there is none with me," He stretched out
the north over the empty space and hanged the earth upon nothing*
all things were made by Him and without Him was made nothing
that was made.

These statements affirming so emphatically an existing and a
creating Deity have been questioned most searchingly and by all
manner of minds and men, and to-day the affirmation stands en-
shrined in the niche which it belongs to and from which it will never
be extended. Thinkers, honest and otherwise, have brought argu-
ments against it, but none of them prevailed. One pseudo-phil-
osopher, one scientist absolutely discredited to-day on account of the
dishonesty of his presentments, when forced by actual demonstration
to admit that spontaneous generation was, in the eyes of the latest
science, a meaningless term and an impossible fact, said to his
followers : " Gentlemen, if we abandon spontaneous generation we
shall have to assert the existence of God, and you know how un-
worthy of a philosopher such an admission would be."

This supremacy of God, His presiding at all origins, is part of
the lesson which the race forgets. Its complement is that every-
thing that is owing all that it is to a maker must bow down in

138 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

worship and obedience to that creator. The attitude of practical,
if not theoretical, forgetfulness of God, has been prolific in deplorable
consequences for the individual, the home, the State. The atheistic
man, or family or State, is committed to most disastrous complica-
tions. It is old apologetics, and it is not a little decried, to advance
that the man who is regardless of God, that the home which ignores
Him and the State which banishes Him, is on the incline which leads
to disintegration. It was true before and after Noe, before and
after Alexander, before and after Caesar, and the averment was
made by the Apostle who knew Jew and Gentile, Roman and
barbarian, because he knew human nature, "For the invisible
things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
. . . but professing themselves to be wise they became fools and
changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made
like to corruptible man." "Wherefore God also gave them up to
uncleanness, gave them up unto vile affections, and receiving on
themselves that recompense of their error which was meet." The
list of abominations is a true catalogue of the woful consequences
of atheism.

What is the history of the family? It is the history of disorder,
loathing, misery and wretchedness of the most heartrending descrip-
tion, working terrible effects on children and on parents. The home
becomes disintegrated and the members of the family carry the
germs of their leprosy into society at large. In modern times the
atheistic State has been in evidence and the story is always the same :
decadence of all morality in high places and low. Such States gene-
rate their own barbarians, who, springing up in their midst, de-
vastate all that humanity prizes, and send out swarms to other and
more prudent lands, swarms defiled by the infection of socialistic
anarchv.

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE 139

This oblivion of God begets the destruction of all religion and
of all the saving influence which flows from religion. The theme
of all these chapters has been the necessity — the absolute necessity —
of religion in pedagogy — a necessity so imperative that, were there
no such thing as religion, he would be a peerless benefactor of his
kind who succeeded in discovering, or rather in inventing, it. De-
velop a child physically only, and you produce an animal, but yet
not such a paragon as nature produces. Add to that achievement
the highest mentality — if highest mentality can be without religion
— and you evolve a rational animal with the emphasis on the animal
element in the compound. Reason untouched by religion will find
itself in constant warfare against the animal part, and in that
struggle reason will be under the control of the senses, and then
may the question be asked, What becomes of the dignity of man
and of the manhood of the species ?

We are told that men without any religion, that even men
who have been apostles of irreligion, were men against whom the
reproach of immorality could not be made. Who knows? Who
is witness of a man's whole life? Who knows what it is necessary
to know before such an eulogy be pronounced? Who knows all
an individual's thoughts, words and deeds? It is for no man to
judge, be it well understood, but there are facts which are so glar-
ingly contradictory of the spotlessness which has been vaunted, that
one hesitates and one fears before sending the probe in more deeply,
lest revelations be made at which humanity would stand aghast.
Unfortunately such revelations are written large and luminously in
our own and other lands.

A preacher of irrehgion must be accused of folly or knavery.
If of folly, then he is acquitted on the plea of temporary insanity
or of permanent dementia. If he has any mind at all, he surely

I40 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

knows that when he poses as an emissary deputed by his own
superior wisdom, he surely knows that he is removing from the
paths of his fellows every check, every rein, every motive that can
restrain the passions from careering at their own wild will, no mat-
ter how much of what man holds dear is trampled under foot.
Such an evangelist must be adjudged as guilty of the highest mis-
demeanor against society, guilty of being a willing and responsible
and exulting purveyor to the criminal desires and designs of his
auditors.

Let them all be perfect in all conceivable ways, it must ever be
kept in mind that there may be such a thing as spiritual heredity.
Their forefathers — the ancestors of those who advocate irreligion in
these days — were Christians, and some of the Christianity is still
helping to leaven the mass. Those irreproachable paragons of the
days before Christ descended from a race of men to whom in the
beginning the great revelation was made, and so consciously or un-
consciously atavism was still energetic enough in some cases to
steer them in or near roads of rectitude.

Were a plebiscite gathered to-day the majority of ballots would
be found on the side of God and of religion. Why, with such
strong currents of atheism, such torrential streams of agnosticism,
which is simply atheism "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,"
flowing up and down and hither and thither throughout the world,
is not all that breathes of religion swept away into unfathomable
depths? The reply seems to be that if man forgets God, He does
not forget man, and besides it may be that these torrents are not as
deep as they are furious, and that these tides, otherwise unconquer-
able, are met with mighty and resistless undercurrents working in
contrary ways. Perhaps, too, in the Sodoms and Gomorras of the
twentieth century there are found ten just men.

THE MATTER OF EDUCATION 141

Part II. Christian Pedagogy Applied

I. THE MATTER OF EDUCATION

The field of pedagogy is as wide as the field of education. Its
principles are intended to apply to everything which may be com-
prised by the demand of full development in all branches of moral,
intellectual and physical training. There is one body of principles
which, though intended for begetting and sustaining the higher life
of the soul, are of such a comprehensive nature that they must be
consulted throughout the whole course of instruction, no matter
how remotely it may seem to be connected with those essential
truths. There are two agents even in moral, or strictly moral,
teaching, which are inseparably united by nature. They are the mind
and the will. The mind may be illuminated with the knowledge of
all morality and so be ready in all emergencies to point out the
path for deliberate action. This in itself is invaluable equipment,
but more is needed.

Men, from Adam down to the latest graduate in college lore,
have known what to do, have known what they should do, have
known how much depended on their doing it, have known that
eternity hung upon their action, but they have refused submission
and closed against themselves the gates of Paradise and shut them-
selves out, and others also, from the enjoyment of all the splendors
within. This makes it evident that mind and will do not always
harmonize, that mind is powerless against a will that is not strong
enough, against a will that, if it is strong enough, prefers to select
a road that mind imperiously condemns. A mind trained to know

142 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

clearly what is right and what is wrong, is, beyond question, a
treasure to be acquired and defended against all suggestions. Yet
what is it without a will made unconquerable by a practise of acts
so constant that habits are formed which render their possessor
invulnerable, or endow the will with a resiliency, so active and so
quick, that it springs back with a sudden bound to its native resolu-
tion? "Cleave ye unto the Lord your God as you have done until
this day. And then no man shall be able to resist you" (Josue
xxiii, 8, 9).

The Scripture uses strong language wherewith to express the
force of habit, be it good or bad. "It is good for a man when he
hath borne the yoke from his youth. He shall sit solitary and hold
his peace, because he hath taken it up upon himself" (Sam. iii, 27).
"His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth. Despairing,
they have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto the working
of uncleanness, unto covetousness" (Ep. iv, 19). Scripture is
only using its own words to tell us what observation and experience
have made clear to all. Habit is a strong character when it drives
along the narrow path, but a relentlessly cruel tyrant when it whips
its victims along the broad road of iniquity.

The question naturally comes to our lips: Where is the teacher,
where is the pedagogue who is able to form will as well as mind?
Alas, he sits at no desk, he lectures from no chair, he preaches
from no pulpit. A man's destiny is in his own hand and no man
can force the will of another. There is a power, unseen as the
winds of heaven are unseen, but palpable as those same airs are
palpable, a power that can so light up the mien of vice that it be-
comes hateful and all flee from it, that can so irradiate the face of
virtue that the man will become enamored of its beauty and will
give up all things in order to possess it. Need it be said that

THE MATTER OF EDUCATION

143

Christ is such a pedagogue, need it be said that the religion taught
by this Church is so rich in resources that the reed shaken by the
storm can be transformed into the forest monarch, that the weakest
mortal may become strong with the strength of omnipotence and
do deeds of integrity so marvelous as to bewilder humanity?

No teacher can do this of himself — be he professor or priest. No
mere professor has it in his power to accomplish it. The priest
is by his vocation the one who brings first aid and last aid to those
who are scorched by the blasts of the Babylonian furnace. Yet he,
too, is powerless where the stricken ones refuse to be helped or,
accepting help, do not follow conscientiously his prescriptions.
There is not a wound of the soul for which the priest has not the
medicaments, medicaments always efficacious to restore the debili-
tated to vigor and to keep the vigorous strong. No matter how
the soul-pestilence may rage, no matter what state of putrescence
it may reduce its victims to, the healing power is always there for
those who cry out in their distress. To say Sacraments, and all they
mean, to the world at large, is to cast pearls before swine. To
speak of the all-saving and all-satisfying Sacrifice is to invite
ridicule and contempt. If the sick man be not trained from his
very early childhood to know the dangers of his malady and to
know to what physician he is to have recourse the priest will be
of little avail, and his last resource, so often so remedial, will be his
own prayer, the prayer of his people, and above all the adorable
oblation wherein the divine Victim pleads so eloquently to the
Father in behalf of the feeble and the erring.

However, fail or fail not, the priest has one command, it is among
the essentials of his priesthood, and that is to go and teach. Educa-
tion nowadays makes an exhausting and exhaustive demand on the
efforts of society at large. It calls for an intimacy with the most

144 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

intricate problems, for knowledge of the heavens and of the earth,
and of the fulness thereof. There is no height too steep for its
climbing, no depth too deep for its fathoming, no areas too broad
for its exploring. This is as it should be, but it is not enough.
There will be no successful climbing, no searching fathoming, no
profitable exploring if the North Star is not kept steadily in view,
if the tremblings of the needle are not vigilantly watched. The
North Star and the needle of all pedagogy is one little book: the
Catechism; one little science: Catechetics. This seems to be an
unjustifiable claim, yet, if these pages have tried to do anything,
they have tried to help make clear that no court can lawfully throw
this claim out, or refuse it consideration.

Religious instruction should preside at the beginning, should
domineer the progress and crown the completion of all pedagogy.
Its matter is so comprehensive and so simple. Beginning with
the most intelligible statements it advances to the highest virtues.
It calls to its assistance all the experience of the world since the
beginning. The Bible — the Old and New Testaments — the history
of the ancient world and the story of Christ and His Redemption,
of the kingdom of God and of the kingdoms of the world, with their
vicissitudes, these chronicles are its handmaidens. It is neither
inspired nor sterile, this study. The thorough Catechist, whether in
the room where prayers alone are rehearsed, or in the lecture room
where questions affecting humanity and as broad as time and eter-
nity are discussed, must necessarily be a man whose place among
the learned is a high, and very high indeed. Who more eloquent,
who more at home in the palpitating problems of their day than the
fathers and doctors of the Church ? Yet their labors were Catecheti-
cal labors and their chiefest triumphs were in the sphere of
Catechetics.

THE CHILDREN 145

II. THE CHILDREN

The children are everywhere, some of them like flowers. God
bless them ! Some of them like weeds. God pity them ! The fact
that they are everywhere, in every clime, under every sky, in every
environment, calls for both exultation and lamentation. They are
subject to all kinds of pressure. Some are loved and cared for.
Some are neglected. Some are well nourished, others are starving.
Starvation is working havoc and death among them, even in cities
where there is untold wealth and where what the lavish throw
away in the satiety of their abundance would spread banquets for
the hungry and furnish ample raiment to the naked. The child
is so helpless and, therefore, calls for vigilant helpfulness ; the child
is so rich in promises and hence calls for intelligent development,
the child is so important, and hence where neglect is criminal who-
soever is privy to the iniquity can not have retribution sufficient
meted out to him on this round of earth of ours.

Because of all this the Mlaster has said in one of his intensest
moments: "He that shall scandalize one of these little ones that
believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be
hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth
of the sea.'* "See that you despise not one of these little ones,
for I say to you that their angels in heaven always see the face of
my Father who is in heaven." The Lord emphasized two mandates
in behalf of children : they must not be despised, they must not be
scandalized. No matter how man forgets them they are not for-
gotten of the angels nor of the Father. Whoso infringes either or
both injunctions has the angels and the Father and the judgment
to come to answer.

146 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

Wonderfully championed are the children. Their guardians and
protection are the angels and the Father. What a beautiful and
what an inspiring gradation: the children, the angels, the Father!
There is joy over one sinner doing penance. If so, what jubilation
over one man, one woman leaping into the arena of the child-world
and doing battle for their rights and for their privileges! How
noble the office of pedagogue and how grand the vocation of the
men, the whole world over, who have spurned all bribes, every in-
ducement, to devote in chastity and poverty and obedience all their
energies in behalf of the child! Yea, and, outside of the cloister,
what eulogy is high enough for those whose endeavors and the work
of whose existence are the patient, wearing, toilsome and some-
times so disheartening task of informing the tender mind of the
young ?

Nothing in the way of effort reacts so potently as teaching. What
the teacher has the child wins, and again, all that the child gains
is given back with usury to the teacher. Verily the reward is a
hundredfold and more, rendered in so many unseen ways in this
life. What blessings come down that wonderful ladder, the steps
of which are the children and the angels, and, bending over all, the
Father ! When we consider we really cease to wonder. The child
means so much to the world, to the angels, to the Father.

"Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers.

Ere the sorrows come with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that can not stop their tears."

The call of the children is booming like the wailing of ocean
through all the stretches of space. The call is a moaning, because
they have none to lead them to the heights whence they come and

THE CHILDREN 147

where they belong, because they are stripped of their heaven-given
right, because their minds are caged when they should be free, be-
cause their souls are starved and stunted when they should be
seated at the tables on which are spread the banquet's for the sons
and for the daughters of the King.

Who are the torturers, aye, and the murderers? Sometimes
the parent's. Sometimes? Who can say how often? When
the son swore. Burton tells us, Diogenes struck the father. He
knew, as we all know, that not the son, but the father was an-
swerable. Sometimes, and again how often, the teachers are to
blame! It is hard to undo the harm which fathers and mothers
w^ork, but if the corrective can be administered, who may depre-
cate the mission of the teacher? The Saviour was so solicitous
about the child because before His mind, clearly manifested, was
the significance of the child. Children are the material out of
which the Creator purposed that His bones and His cities and His
countries, and His peoples and His nations and His world should
be built.

What a world it would be if so much childhood were not
neglected, were not dwarfed, were not rendered unfit for the up-
rearing of the palace which the Maker intended should be so mag-
nificent! The children are the citizens of the future, those into
w^iose hands will be committed all the interests of humanity, those
in whose power it will be to enshrine or deface the image of God
in morals, in laws, in everything that contributes to progress or
retrogression. The simple child that lightly draws its breath is
all that and more to God. That simple child is the realization of
all the sublime purposes of creation, that simple child is an unit
of order or of disorder, of law or of anarchy, of happiness or
misery, of failure or of success for himself and for all the world.

148 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

Wo! unto him that interferes in any way, directly or indirectly,
with the child who represents God's views on the race ! The child
meant all that to the angels. For them he is a hoped-for member
of their heavenly circle. They are expectant of a day in which he
will join their ranks and be proclaimed a citizen among the celestial
choirs. Wo! because of the angels, wo to him who by neglect or
wilful speech or action renders hopeless this expectation of the
angels. For all this must the children be cultivated as no flower
or rare growth is cultivated and guarded as no rare gem is guarded.
The whole world is, and should be, laid under tribute for them.
For them should be procured the most costly institutions and schools,
the most skilful, the most competent trainers. For them must
legislations construct laws that have no loophole through which any
right or privilege of theirs might fall and be lost, or in any way
diminished. For them must systems be devised full of attraction,
full of light for the mind and warmth for the heart. From their
privileged circle must be banished all error, all dishonesty, all in-
sincerity. Into their atmosphere only what is purest must pene-
trate, the purest among men and women and what is most incor-
ruptible in doctrine.

The pedagogy which cannot guarantee all this for the child must
be whipped out of the land and the pedagogue who would break
through this guarantee for any evil minded cupidity of his own,
or for his own vanity, or for any low motive, should be stripped of
his scepter and forever banished to some ultimate Siberia.

This is the Christian idea of teachership. This is pedagogy which
becomes baptized in the healing waters of religion, has in it the
germs of moral, intellectual and physical culture, without which the
children may never see the face of the Father.

nSBTMOD

III. METHOD

149

/c) Method, in general^ is any orderly way of doin^ a thing. The
more orderly the way, and the more successful its influence upon
a projected achievement, the more perfect the method is. In

■(-} pedagogy method Jsajystematized process for imparting instruc-
tion, and in that particular branch of Christian pedagogy called

^*^^ catechetics method is the plan to be followed in teaching Gate*
chism. This supposes in the teacher a regulated mind. In the
child that regularity of thought in the teacher is to be reflected. It is
a transit of the order in the thinking of the teacher to the thinking
of the child. The more perfect the communication to the child,
the more efficient is the work of the master. How much method
insures to profitable teaching is self-evident. How much its absence
paralyzes all mental eflfort is equally palpable.
. Logic affirms that meth^ system of right procedure for the

attainment of truth. If we modify the definition and state that
method is a system of right procedure, for the attainment and for
the imparting of truth, we have a definition which covers all that
is essential in its relation to all pedagogy, and especially cafe-
chetics. Of how much moment in all teaching method is, there can
be no doubt.

Method has been the subject of much discussion, and naturally.
Tto-e are general laws which guide it and there are no others. C>4
When a method combines clearness and interest we have stated -/
the common measure by which it isjimlted. In every other feature t^
it is necessarily at the mercy of the one who uses it, and in his
hands, while it retains the main features, it is undergoing many

15© CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

accidental variations. It is for this reason that teachers can not
be made by machinery, or, what is the same thing, by procrustean
devices of training. No matter how much a teacher may be put
under pressure in normal or other schools, his limitations will
survive, and it is precisely on this account there are practically as
many systems as there are teachers. This is not a fact which
should disheailen.

This retention of one^s individuality is a trait rather .i:o,.Ue.. Wel-
comed than censured. The teacher who becomes so identified with
his method that he is owned by his method will certainly prove
S^,. either a useless or a dangerous factor in education. Such an one
"""^i p utterly colorless. He is an anemic. He is lifeless. In the
""^ classroom he is a forbidding specter. He spreads gloom and dis-
ti satisfaction. He moves in monotonous grooves. He is no more
r than sounding brass. He is a phonograph, and the children^who
ttiS^^^'are compelled to pass hours under his arctic and tenebrific sway,
are mere inert masses, whose whole activity reduces itself to blind/'
gropinp^ and unreasoning;; instinct.

There is certainly such a thing as being too methodical. There
is no matter which is not in some little measure resilient. This is
trlie of the grossest matter. Hence we look for elasticity in every
character, and when we do not find it there where it ought to be
discoverable, in one to whom is committed the education of the
young, then is a very evident and important duty to be discharged,
and that is the obligation of either withdrawing such a monstrosity
from our children or our children from the care of such an over-
whelming phenomenon.

Books as well as professors express and elucidate and uphold
systems. Text books are necessarily pledged to this. A text
book has in it germs of all possible inoculation. The germs may

METHOD 151

be neutralized when treated by a master who has not become the
inanimate serf of a system. But the teacher alluded to above, plus
a text book, results in a combination as deadly as an infernal
machine. Of the making of text books there is no end. To-day
everywhere text books are written, and text books that have in
them nothing of value, save what tradition has saved from the
universal wreckage.

Just as there are two kinds of speakers, there are two kinds of
text-book writing. There are speakers who have something to
say and there are speakers who have to say something. There are
text book authors who have something to print and authors who
have to print something. Comparing the damage inflicted on the
young it is not unsafe to say that the book men are more harmful
than the speakers. There are methods which have stood the test
of the centuries, methods which have formed great and very great
men and women. How many are in use to-day ? This is admittedly
a boomerang. However, the return blow will be accepted in a spirit
of evangelical resignation.

All or the little that has been said of method is especially applic-
able to catechetics. Of Catechism and of books on catechetical
instruction there is no end. The fact that religious instruction
begins earlier than any other compels more and keener discernment
in the matter of text books and commentators. Many valuable
hints are given, but is it unjustifiable to ask where in our tongue
is the perfect Catechism? An eclectic compilation might produce
one. The method of catechetics suggests itself. All suggestions
are to be weighed and some day or other the genius will arise who
will give to the world the masterpiece we are so anxiously awaiting.

If clearness and interest are the indispensable requisites in all
communication of any kind of knowledge, these qualities are more

15^

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

cogently demanded in catechetical pedagogy. Limpidity and brevity
go far toward the make-up of clearness- Simplicity of language
is essential. These are not every teacher's inborn gifts. Labor
sometimes, but not always, conquers every difficulty. There is
a tendency, in elemental instruction, to fancy — it is fancy only and
nothing more — that preparation is not necessary, or, if necessary,
that it need only be very perfunctory. This opinion condemns itself
and its advocates. One half hour of Catechism calls for more than
half an hour's preparation. The rule is axiomatic, that the more
one prepares the more successful will the performance of one's
allotted task be. The teacher of a Catechism class should know his
lesson as perfectly as he calls for the child to know it. Add to this
a laboriously prepared explanation, a collection of apt but easily
intelligible illustrations from things familiar to the pupils, and it
will be immediately recognized that a lesson, no matter how short,
in religious doctrine, is work, the necessity of which can not be
dismissed with a shrug. One who appreciates the importance and
the difficulties of this duty will be a man of prayer as w^ell as a man
of industry. The whole after life of the child depends upon the
method according to which it has been trained in Catechism. If the
method is one that wearies and mystifies, then it is to be feared that
in the days to come everything connected with religion, all its prac-
tises, will wear a somber and forbidding aspect.

PERSONALITIES AND CONDITIONS

153

IV. PERSONALITIES AND CONDITIONS

The race has not always been to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong. Whether in animal or in man, therehave been, in contests,
so many surprises that the wise refuse to prophesy until the indi-
vidual note has been clearly discerned. This individual charac-
teristic is what is understood as personality. It is something which
must never be left out of the reckoning- It is gersonajjty^whjch h^
domineered all history. It is personality which ^ conquers to-day.
Everybody has a personality of some sort, but in many cases the
personality is so weak that it plays a very insignificant role. In an
Institution, as well as in a government, or, for the matter of that,
in any circle, there is always a leader, just as in the human body
there is always a head.

There has been and there will always be an outcry against
/supremacy of this or of any kind. Yet the outcry will ever be a
vain one. In politics there will always be a "boss," and the power
exercised will be always one-man power. In machinery, no matter
how complicated, one little button or one small lever lets loose all
the energy. All the struggles of humanity have been struggles of
personalities. This fact, which lies on the surface of all experience,
and which is visible to the dimmest sight, is to be taken into con-
sideration in all education. It is suggestive to every educator,
both for his own sake and for the sake of those whom he educates.
Without a doubt pedagogy is a science which makes for the develop-
ment of personality. Personality and character are almost inter-
changeable terms, but, like all terms, they are not synonymous.

154 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

One supposes the other, but one is not the other. Character under-
h*es personality and personality is the expression of character. Per-
sonality is character in evidence, character in action, character as
it impresses and controls others.

In a school, or a Sunday-school, it is eminently desirable that the
chief thereof possess the strongest personality. This does not mean
that his aids should have no or little personality. On the contrary,
if there be a profession which by its nature calls for the forceful
characteristics which are being discussed, it is the profession of
teaching. The strongest individuality in the classroom must be
that of the teacher. His must be an individuality of compelling
power. His very presence should command respect and attention
and submission. One difference between character and personality
is here to be noted. That difference is that character rules by
action and personality sways by mere presence- That individuality,
in the particular sense in which it is being viewed, can not be over-
looked in the child. There is no education, it is known, without
personality. As education means the bringing into growth first,
and afterward into action, all the powers of the child, the person-
ality of the child will, in the end, depend upon its education.

Here is the crowning mission of education — ^to make, to expand
all the faculties of the physical, of the mental, and of the moral
nature of the child, to expand them in the fullest, and when ex-
panded, to coordinate and subordinate them into a compacted
unity, from which a harmony is breathed which praises God,
delights the angels, and charms and uplifts men. Thus personality
is created, the very existence of which blesses and glorifies human
nature.

Multiply these elevating agencies and who will refuse to say all
hail to the educator? Who will be unwilling to admit that the

PERSONALITIES AND CONDITIONS 155

safety of all that is best under the stars is really in the hands of
the men and women teachers in the land? In some dim way this
has been understood by the race and from the beginning. There
is an old apologue which tells that as Jove was visiting the Shades
one day, he determined to inquire what vocations these bodiless
ones had followed when among the living. There were philoso-
phers, and generals, and rulers, and orators, and as each detailed the
work done for his fellows while on earth, the ruler of Olympus
expressed his approval and lauded them for their efforts and prom-
ised reward. He noticed that on the outermost edge of the circle
surrounding him there was one who shrank from all notice. He
called and asked him what his task had been in other days. After
much delay the answer came that his life had not amounted to much,
that nobody cared for him, that no monuments had been reared to
him, that he had fought no battles, won no victories. "But what
were you ?" insisted Jupiter. The reply was, ''Only a schoolmaster,
majesty, and these are all my boys." His praise was the highest
and his reward the richest.

But the world assents to this only when the school, through the
agency of the teachers, gives to the family and the state and the
church young men and young women endowed with that charm
that is so attractive, when heart and sense and mind form a person-
ality strong and bright and fragrant. How far is it within the power
of education to so influence individuals as to transform them into
these activities so beneficent that humanity can not afford to miss
them? This brings up the question, is personality congenital, or
can it be created? That character is germinally in everyone com-
ing into the world is true, but it is equally true that germs may be
brought into an atmosphere propitious or otherwise, wholesome
or not. Many lives have been turned awry and many lives have

xs6 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

sprung up into beauty and splendor under the touch of good or of
evil environment.

The most potent of all environments is that of the school. So
it lies with the school teacher to mold and fashion individuality.
We are not forgetting the home, for home is a school and father
and mother are the school teachers. Speaking in general, the Sun-
day school is the first school the Christian child enters. This
school for a time antedates all other schools, and then it enters
into competition with all instructors. It competes with the family
and with the public school. It is no weak rival of the others. It
is often, the successful rival, and well is it when it is so. Without it
the home is incomplete. Without it the public school is dangerous.
It often becomes the only home the city waif has ; that is, the only
comforting spot that has any warmth and cheer for him. Eulogy
is dumb in the face of all the Sunday school is called upon to do,
and in the face of all it can do. It has the wherewithal to shape
personality. Its touch can be so delicate, and the lives it traces, if
the fingers move deftly, can be so beautiful.

What a mirror it is then for the child and how full of winning-
ness it is as it holds up to him all the sweet loveliness of the Child
Christ. It calls upon the child to kneel down in prayer to God
and the saints. Thus the child comes in contact with things
spiritual, and while acknowledging the supremacy of the Almighty,
finds the emotions of its young breast tamed. Modesty and submis-
sion and unselfishness, yea and humility, enter and take possession,
and the foundations of a great moral character are laid, from which
will emerge a personality strong to rebuke, by its presence alone,
all that is wild and unlawful in others. Personality may be created
in the sense that all the units which combine to engender it may
cohere and expand under laws which regulate and fortify. The

PERSONALITIES AND CONDITIONS 157

Creator has furnished to each the material of this personality
which, after all, is all the man is during life. Christian pedagogy,
in the field of Catechetics, has the call and the power to fashion
that material.

158 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

V. TEMPERAMENT

Temperament is a very old term, as old in fact as the condition
it expresses, and has been used since anything like systematic phil-
osophy has been introduced into education. It is wonderful to
relate that its meaning to-day is precisely the same that it was in
the days of the scholastics or in the remoter days of Aristotle.
This is wonderful when it is remembered that the most puzzling
obstacle to be found in the study of logic or metaphysics to-day is
the interpolation of new words conveying old ideas and the meta-
morphosing of old words to signify supposedly new concepts. It
may be that novelty of terminology has added something to knowl-
edge. It may be, too, that new investigation and the addition of
new facts which give birth to new ideas compel terms which would
make "Quintilian stare and gape." Yet in this, as in most other
things, it is not unwise to be not the first by whom the new are
tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Novelty is scarcely ever commendable. There is nothing new
under the sun, and where an old term will do it is not dangerous to
retain it. Besides, it would not require a wizard to compute how
many really hitherto undiscovered ideas have been given to hu-
manity, but a lightning calculator would find it an impossible task to
sum up the number of absolutely unnecessary words which have
been foisted upon all the languages of the world. Unnecessary?
Rather they are harmful words. Such expressions are nocuous,
because they are useless and because they mislead and they over-
load. It would be no calumny to assert that, in not a few instances,

TEMPERAMENT 159

in the minds of their framers, it was intended that they should
be so. In those frequent "isms" of the age the very striking fea-
ture is the numberless terms that are either meaningless or designed
equivocally. There has been manifested since the Renaissance a
contempt for the scholarship of the Middle Ages, and that unrivaled
development of human genius which goes by the name of scholastic
philosophy has become a synonym for the out of date, the naive,
the scientifically worthless. Yet there has not since been invented
a terminology more concise, more adequate, more clear than the
terminology that characterizes so many of the productions of those
ages. The words they used were words that were fit because they
thought clearly, and if their influence is potent to-day it is for the
reason that they wrote and spoke as clearly and as profoundly as
they thought.

Neo-scholasticism will not detach itself from old scholasticism
because the latter has the breath of life in it and breathes in the new.
Not so with neo-Kantism, nor so with neo-agnosticism. Kantism
and agnosticism have too many germs of decay — departures from
old established truths — so that neo-Kantism will have nothing of
Kant in it, and neo-agnosticism will possess nothing of its disciples
because the theories they elaborated can not withstand the tritura-
tion of time nor live in the height of a truly advanced learning.

In those days which can never die, in the days of St. Thomas and
St. Bonaventure, there was a pedagogy which in essentials has not
been surpassed — a pedagogy unhesitatingly Christian. They spent
themselves in showing scientifically that religion was an act of
worship which the origin and nature and destiny of man made
obligatory for every rational creature. In terms of reason they
announced and defended and proved the immortality of the human
soul, that He who made that undying spirit made it for a last, in-

i6o CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

finite, perfectly beatifying possession: Himself. They upheld that
to win Him was to win everything; that to lose Him was to lose
everything; that He was the norm of morality, and that His ex-
istence was the only basis of all moral obligation, and that the
pedagogy which insinuated anything else was a malediction for man.
Man they studied in all that make him up essentially, and they have
left a residuum of conclusions about man physically and spiritually
which is an indispensable as well as a rich legacy to modern science.
They knew what a part the animal constituent of man played in the
great warfare of existence. Ascetics assumed their data about the
individual, and because they understood they became saints them-
selves and made holy men and holy women of others. As teachers
and directors they watched their pupils and disciples closely. They
made large allowances for everything and so their guidance was
wise and salutary. They formed character, and they neglected noth-
ing. It is not astonishing, therefore, that temperament engaged a
considerable share of attention. It were well that the catechist gave
heed to that particular feature in the boy or girl. Temperament,
we may say, is the part which the body and its whole organism
enacts in all human activity.

It will be granted that "man's character is partly inherited, partly
acquired — due, in part, to nature, in part to nurture." What man
inherits is what is bequeathed to his body by his parents. Strictly
speaking, this is all that heredity may lay claim to. In a general
way, since body and soul interact, whatever modifications of mind
or will are brought about by this interrelation is so much a result
of heredity. This must, however, be persistently maintained that
the will is always its own master and so can struggle successfully
against all the propensities which through the body may be trace-
able to ancestry. The inherited element of character in so far as it

TEMPERAMENT i6i

is determined by his bodily constitution was called his temperament,
and to-day the four great types of temperament recognized by
Aristotle and Galen are still recognized not physiologically, but as
a classification which is rather helpful than disturbing.

Any Catechist looking around his class with an observing eye will
note the choleric temperament which makes its possessor energetic,
prompt, passionate, ambitious, proud and angry. He will dis-
tinguish the sanguine temperament which is revealed in the light-
hearted, imaginative, vivacious, brilliant, enthusiastic child. There is
the child who is slow, somnolent, imperturbable, tranquil. Galen
would diagnose his temperament as phlegmatic. There is, lastly,
the boy or the girl who mopes, broods, is prone to sadness, envy,
suspicion, who is introspective, obstinate and persevering in dislike ;
this is the melancholy temperament. The teacher who means to do
for a child all that it is in his power to do will not neglect its
temperament.

This closeness of study, in the matter of the disposition of his
children, will suggest many ways and means of dealing with them.
No one is a successful student of others who has not studied him-
self and especially his own temperament. Know thyself is a maxim
the following of which prevents a teacher from falling into the
worst error in the management of a child, the error of misunder-
standing the child. This is an ignorance which is productive of
much harm and much wrong. Everyone knows how fruitful in evil
it is in the home. Everyone perhaps is, or has been, and certainly
will be, the victim of this most lamentable mistake.

Christ attracted children because He knew them, and because He
knew them He loved them. If the teacher only knew all, how much
injustice would remain undone and how seldom the schoolroom
would be the theater of scenes of cruelty, unnecessary severity of

i62 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

injustice and of the thousand and one unkind dagger words that
would break older hearts than those of the children, who forget
much, thank God, but who always remember partiality and in-
justice. When we have tamed our own temperament to discretion,
we will begin to learn how to control and guide the temperaments of
others. This is real and sound pedagogy, for it humanizes and it
uplifts.

MEMORIZING 163

VI. MEMORIZING

"Language/' says Coleridge, "is the armory of the human mind
and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its
future conquests." He means language which blends sound and
sense — otherwise language is only stringing together of idle words
in execration of which Shakespeare exclaims : "Out, idle words, serv-
ants to shallow fools." When we speak of language, therefore, in
the only sense in which it is language, in the sense that it tongues
ideas, it is not hard to admit that language is a meaningless jumble,
and to be discarded when it abets either shallowness or folly. Lan-
guage is among our rarest possessions, not only because it puts us in
communication with others and others with us, but also because it is
the casket in which are enshrined all those high spiritual thoughts
which "shine like jewels on the outstretched forefinger of all time."
Words which are the elements out of which language is compacted,
even single words, hold boundless stores of moral and historic truth,
of passion and imagination from which lessons of infinite worth may
be derived. A man regrets many things in life, and among them
are the beautiful visions of supreme culture which held him captive
as he read, and awakened in him immortal longings — all of which
are his no more, because they have dropped from his memory, and
vain are all his efforts to recall them. He bewails the inactivity of
his memory. There are other men, and their memory is ever alive
and wields an imperial scepter over all the mental activity of the
past, and can summon to the sessions of silent thought the whisper-
ings of the great men who in remote and recent days spoke words of
inspiration, words that ready remembrance brings back, words

i64 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

that bring with them fragrance and melody. These men thank God
for the blessing which is theirs.

Though phenomenal memory be innate, any memory, however in-
sufficient it be at first, may be cultivated, from a seedling spring
up into a sturdy growth. The doors of memory are not to be
thrown open to all who knock. There are scenes possible in ex-
perience upon which memory must drop an impenetrable curtain —
scenes which should never have been permitted to enter that sanctu-
ary. It is the same for words and for thoughts. Memory should
be intolerantly aristocratic. The guardians of the memory are the
senses and the mind and the will, and as they watch themselves
so will they protect memory. This faculty, which can not be neg-
lected, except criminally, calls for attention from almost the earliest
years, and by no teacher should it be more watchfully guided than
by the master of the catechism class. Catechism should be lodged
securely in the memory of the boy or girl. This follows from the
importance of the matter. One thing it is of the greatest moment
never to forget, and that one thing is any and every lesson of the
Sunday school or the catechism class. Oblivion may cloud over
all else, but not what religious instruction has taught. Everything
else is unnecessary, but the truths of the faith are at all times neces-
sary. These and their fruits are the one thing necessary. This is a
truism of the most unmistakable type; yes, but in view of much
that is seen happening around us, it is a truism that is fading from
much human remembrance, and woful is the havoc its disappearance
creates.

Fuller has said of memory that it is "like a purse, if it be over-
full that it can not shut, all will drop out of it. Take heed of a
gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of
the appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof." Rarely

MEMORIZING 165

have minds been found over-full of catechism, and rarely have our
children needed to be warned against a gluttonous curiosity. If
ever such children are seated on the forms of the catechism room,
it would be in no wise dangerous to stimulate that gluttonous
curiosity and to hold these phenomena up for the admiration and
emulation of the fact. The first and best effort of the teacher must
relate to the memory work of those with whose instruction he is
charged. To memorize means to have and to hold. This is its
chief function. Memorizing is photographing, and every feature
and every line of every feature must be traceable in the reproduc-
tion. Children have not memorized their lines when they hesitate,
deliberate, stammer or mutilate.

There should be two marks only for memory. The marks should
be either the highest or zero. It is impossible where this faculty is
concerned to be too precise or particular. The perfection demanded
here is, however, incomplete unless it mounts a step further.
A faultless memory lesson supposes letter perfect and sense perfect.
These two degrees may exist separately. The perfection of the
letter, however, may be without the perfection of the sense, but
not vice versa. The two should fit each other as hand fits glove.
Sense perfection is not here what is meant by the general mean-
ing, but is the meaning of each word, and the meaning of each
clause, and the meaning of each phrase as they are in the author
and as they fall from the lips of the one who recites. It is with this
last proviso in mind that were made the above remarks on the advan-
tage of the study of words. Single words are so full of meaning,
and when etymologically studied they suggest so much that is worth
while knowing, and besides when a word is known it seems to ac-
quire an inalienable right and forever to a reserved seat in the
memory.

i66 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

The first memory lesson in Catechetics is learning the prayers
by heart. As a word study, what is signified by the expression
"learning by heart" ? For the one idea we have these three expres-
sions: "Learning by heart," "learning by rote/' "memorizing."
"Learning by rote" we have to discard altogether from our catecheti-
cal vocabulary, because to learn by rote is to learn mechanically, is to
learn as a parrot learns, is to learn without any adverting to the
sense. Such a memory task is suited only to public auctioneers, the
guides in the London Tower, or in most if not in all of our summer
resorts where special attractions are elucidated for the benefit of
the rustic gazers. But "to learn a lesson by heart," the question is
asked in all honesty, what meaning has it? Does it insinuate that
heart and memory are identical, or that the most successful way of
grading the memory to profitable exercise is the one all of us have
witnessed, the audible one of breast or heart-scrutiny, or that
memory must pluck the very heart out of the lesson, or that mem-
ory will never fail when it joins with heart in its efforts, will
never fail when the child sits down to its task with a heart love for it.
Love may do much, and in the end will do all, but at the very be-
ginning heart means eyes and ears and stomach, which throws much
of the labor on the catechist. The prayers are the earliest lesson.
They are not always learned at home, nor at parochial schools, nor
in college classes.

In this matter the teacher must make assurance doubly sure.
Each word must have its beginning, middle and end. As far as
possible each word must be understood. Anything learned as a
memory lesson must first be understood. The prayers should be
learned so well that they will never be forgotten. How few if any
forget their alphabet? The prayers are the alphabet of religion.
Poor children ! Who knows what fate is ahead of them ? They will

MEMORIZING 167

wander here and there and everywhere. They will forget home
and Church, but it must be seen to that they will know and will not
forget their "Our Father," "Hail Mary/' and the "Act of Con-

i68 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

VII. DANGERS

In the eleventh chapter of St. Luke, Christ speaking of the king-
dom of God says, "When a strong man armed keepeth his court,
those things are in peace which he possesseth. But if a stronger
than he come upon him and overcome him, he will take away all his
armor wherein he trusted and will distribute his spoils." The
allusion here is to the never-ending struggle that began with Chris-
tianity, is still on, and will continue until the end of time. Because
the unclean spirits will ever wage this terrible war. Christ, who has
not left his servants orphans, will be with them until the end of time,
and His victory over the gates of hell is sure and will be the finality
of all tilings. In the conflict, though ultimate triumph is as in-
evitable as the determination of Christ is inflexible, yet because the
battle is being fought day and night, century in and century out,
there is an element of danger, and, therefore, of partial or seeming
defeat which it were unwise to overlook or underestimate.

Catechetics, or Christian pedagogy, is the most direct defense
against the onslaught of the prince of darkness, who for that reason
in a thousand subtle and occult, as well as uncovert ways, will
strive to obtain the supremacy. Hence is it that Christian pedagogy
of any kind, and especially that chief mission which is its, the mis-
sion of undermining the kingdom of the world, must of a necessity
be full of hazard and countless dangers must beset it. St. Paul tells
of the perils to which, as the colossal antagonist, he was subjected.
"Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered
shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depths of the sea. In

DANGERS 169

journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils
from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city,
in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false
brethren" (II Cor. xi, 25-26).

Of these perils he would not have the Corinthians ignorant, for
he feared that lest perhaps when he came to them for the third time
he would not find them such as he would, and he would be found by
them such as they would not. In his whole demeanor toward these
young Christians he manifests two things: the first that he would
always come to them with the same doctrine, and that he had for the
glory of the truth to suffer so much anguish of mind and so much
hardship of body, they, too, might understand, that all life, and
above all the Christian life, is a warfare upon earth, and so blows
must be given and blows must be taken, otherwise the strong one
will overcome and distribute the spoils. This chief warrior in
apostolic days was the great Christian pedagogue, and the road he
traversed is the only road to lasting achievement. Ulysses under-
went ten years of journeyings, with their not unmixed hardships,
to bring his handful of followers home, but how uninspiring" all
his experience compared with the body and soul crushing Odyssey
of the Apostle!

A careful and a meditative perusal of the life of St. Paul will
diffuse much light around the path of the Catechist. The first
danger to be encountered, and a perilous danger it is, is the tendency
to become disheartened in the work. Discouragement is the strong-
est foe of the one who devotes himself to the task of teaching
religion to the young. St. Paul adverts to that risk. His manner
of overcoming it is, in reality, the only resource. He wa^s j)cr-
suaded that the mission which had been so miraculously thrust upon
him was from God, and was the highest mission and overshadowing

I70 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

all others. It was above the strength of^mere^ m2njL_therefore^and
so he placed all his rdiance on God. This was done in a way that
almost compelled heaven to come to his assistance. His co-operation
with the Master was intense and vigilant and persistent. He did
everything as if everything depended upon himself alone, and yet
with an abiding conviction that all depended only upon God. This
gave him the right to beseech heaven in season and out of season.
His success was not always apparent. He found himself time and
again as if all his labor had been in vain. Even his preaching — the
most eloquent preaching in substance and in form that ever fell
from human lips — ^was void at times. His tribulation coming from
his solicitude of all the churches was such "that we are pressed out
of measure above our strength, so that we were weary of life."
This was the weariness of the man who could say, "Thanks be
to God, who hath given us the victory through the Lord Jesus
Christ."

The same door that was opened to St. Paul is there for the
humblest preacher and the lowliest teacher to knock at. What gave
him wings was the high appreciation of the Gospel he preached, and
above all the unselfish motives which actuated him. This apprecia-
tion and their motives have the same transforming power now they
had then. They made Apostles in all the centuries, they are equally
potent in this twentieth century. Where a teacher loses heart, then
all the work of education crumbles. There is no atmosphere so
pernicious as the atmosphere created by those that are faint of
heart. Tt infects the children, and their faith loses much of its
robustness.

To-day fighters are needed as they were in the days of the
Apostles. But the enemies are so alert and so many that no Catholic
may push his way through them if his religion is only a festival

DANGERS 171

dress, if his religion is not part of every faculty of his soul, if his
religion is not his strongest vitality, if his faith is not the armor of
all his waking seconds, minutes and hours. Robust Christianity is
necessary to-day and always. The fight is on different lines, but it
is still a fight, and, therefore, the valiant only will win.

What has been said reveals two dangers, one intensifying the
t other. The danger that the instructor lose his head and the danger
that his lack of courage will infect all under his care, and, so will be
begotten, instead of an army of chosen warriors, a listless host run-
ning at the sound of the charge and dropping and dying by the
wayside. The remedy for this spiritual torpor has been indicated.
The voice of the Apostle is a bugle blast, or rather the voices of all
the Apostles are bugle blasts.

The great apostolic Catechist was not the last of his line. His
blood has been running in many veins, and many sons and daughters
have been raised up to him in all the ages. To-day they are scatter-
ing themselves over the whole world — ^young men and young
women, old men and old women, grown gray and venerable in the
service of the Lord. They have not left a spot of this revolving globe
unvisited, and to-day as the sun careers through its allotted spaces it
beholds them among all the peoples of the earth. They are teaching
under all the stars and in every clime. They are delivering the
message of Christ, and from every land goes up the cry of the
great pentecostal avatar: "Behold! are not all these that speak
Galileans? And how have we heard, every man, our own tongue,
wherein we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and
Asia, Phyrgia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya about
Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews, also, and Proselytes, Cretes
and Arabians, we have heard them speak in our own tongues the

I7a CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

wonderful works of God" (Acts ii, 8). If the laborer is worthy of
his hire, how exceedingly great will his recompense be who, despite
discouragement and all perils, brings, through his teaching, the
glory of the nations to Christ !

QUALIFICATIONS OF INSTRUCTORS 173

VIII. QUALIFICATIONS OF INSTRUCTORS

Robert Burton, in a subsection of his "Anatomy of Melancholy,"
adduces many authorities to prove that school teachers are in many
instances causes of sadness. This is certainly demonstrated by
almost everyone's experience. 'If a man escape a bad nurse, he
may be undone by evil bringing up." Tutors and masters are often
too vigorous or too remiss. They offend by being too stern, always
threatening, chiding, whipping or striking. St. Austin confesses
how cruelly he was tortured in mind for learning Greek — a con-
fession which has been made by many before and since the age of
the great doctor. If any profession calls for careful training it is
that of teacher. There have been born teachers and their success
has been phenomenal. They did not aim at doling out so much
information by the hour or by the day, but their ambition was to li if
furnish forth to the world splendidly equipped men and women.ff
Much must be forgiven those who lacked professional training
in other times because in those years the facilities were not such as
exist now. Those factors, too, should be exercised in acquitting or
condemning the masters of the past. Some were despicable and
contemptible, and again some professed and imparted a scholarship
which is as high as any these times in which we live can display.

The idea of training teachers professionally is comparatively recent.
To-day there are normal schools, training classes and courses in
schools and colleges, teachers' institutes, reading circles, summer
schools and university extension. Yet, while we are proud of the
advance made, it must be remembered that the religious teaching
bodies had always the very system of preparation which in the
present is exciting such admiration and awakening such well de-

174 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

served attention and patronage. This is especially true of the
Jesuits. There is no new feature in modern training which can
not be found in their ratio studiorum. How they, in consequence
of legislation framed by the founder and his successors, slowly and
patiently and skilfully formed their teachers is chronicled in his-
tory. How their methods succeeded is attested by literary and scien-
tific and learned names in every country in Christendom. It must
not be said that they originated the practical and immeasurably
valuable ideas of their plan of education. They make no such
claim. They recognize, and recognize gratefully, that they absorbed
the ideas of their predecessors and co-ordinated them and made
them adaptable to the needs of the particular cycle in which they
moved. There is an elasticity in their plan which excludes nothing
that is new and good and true, and there is an inflexibility which
prevents the traditions of the past, which helped make the past all
that honest searchers admire, which prevents those traditions from
being forgotten or in any way neutralized. They understood that
the progress that destroys all the past is not only no progress, but
is chaotic in its results. Outsiders, who know, willingly admit that
there is no pedagogical notion energizing to-day which they have
not crystallized and preserved, if not entirely, at least in germ.
They have their courses in teaching and they have their normal
classes, and their summer schools, and their university extension.
It is a matter of regret that they do not open those doors to the
many who are knocking because they are desirous of an instruction
which, while it is profound and suitable to all the scientific demands
of the age, is fragrant with the sweet odor of faith which, while it
renders all learning incorruptible, is at the same time a soul-tonic
against all that is nauseating and diseased in so much of that peda-
gogy which has such a wide and dangerous influence.

QUALIFICATIONS OF INSTRUCTORS 175

The qualifications of the instructor have not yet been touched upon
save by way of insinuation. All these pages have been written with
one purpose only — the purpose of directly or indirectly pointing out
what equipment is required in the teacher who is faithful and loyal
to the inspirations of true Christian pedagogy. It is only a short
while since pedagogy took into its fold Catechetics. There is no
essential endowment demanded of the secular teacher that is not
demanded of the catechist and demanded in terms not weak but
forcible. It is a crude way to say it, but it is true, that a man
may forget all other subjects that he has studied, but he must not
forget what he was taught in religious instruction classes. He
must not forget his Catechism. There is a book written on the
term ''Apperception," Its meaning is therein patiently and learnedly
developed. The history of the word is given. Its origin is traced
to the philosophy and its growth followed through the systems of
Kant, Herbart and others up to Wundt. There is a chapter on
"The Significance of Apperception, the Spiritual Development of
Man." The questions discussed are the theory of the applicability
of apperception to pedagogy in its choice and arrangement of the sub-
ject matter of education, in the investigation, extension and utiliza-
tion of the child's experience, in the methods of instruction. What
is apperception ? It is the psychical process of mental assimilation ;
a process, says the writer, which has a validity beyond mere sub-
jective perception and is of the greatest significance for all knowl-
edge; yes, even for our whole spiritual life. This quotation has
not been made with any hostile purpose. On the contrary we
laud the devotion, but is not the question relevant if so much is ad-
vanced and with zeal in behalf of the one term "Apperception"?
Should not at least as much be urged for the little book called
Catechism?

176 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

The catechist whose work is the work so well done that it
leaves on the mind and heart of the child ineffaceable traces —
traces that would be visible when all else is obscure, is the catechist
who rejoices the heart of the Church and who is certainly qualified
for his post. His work is of such a nature, that investigation will
lay bare what really are the qualifications of an instructor. So
eminently worthy. No such work can be performed unless there are
knowledge and preparation and self-control and control of others,
on the part of the teacher. These are precisely the qualifications
that are to be insisted on. Labor is imperative, but it must be
the labor of love springing from high motives. This spirit of
industry compels preparation, and preparation guarantees knowl-
edge. The knowledge to be insisted upon here is twofold. The
instructor must understand what he is going to teach and must
be able to give it to his class in a clear, simple, interesting way.
This is the real labor of preparation. The mature mind must con-
ceive it in such a way that the volatile mind will be attracted by it
at first, then seize it, then hold it. How much effort is involved
in such labor only those know who have made the effort. All
preliminaries will be in vain if the instructor is powerless to con-
trol himself and his class. The one who controls himself will soon
be monarch, not tyrant, of all he surveys.

Libraries have been printed on the necessary endowments of the
teacher and it is right and good that it is so, but it must be con-
ceded, first, that books of themselves can not fashion a preceptor,
and, secondly, that all books, we may say, are reducible to the simple

/rule that he must know what he teaches and must so teach as to
n make his hearers, however youn^, attentive and eager listcnerSt

JUSTICE

177

IX. JUSTICE

In that noble achievement^ "The Catholic Encyclopedia," a work
which reflects vast learning, high scholarship, indomitable courage,
inspiring leadership and devoted cooperation, and throughout all
an honesty unimpeachable which make it a monument more endur-
ing than marble or bronze to American Catholic enterprise and in-
dustry, in an article we find that in the early Church Catechumen
was a name applied to one who had not yet been initiated into the
sacred mysteries, but was undergoing a course of preparation for
that purpose. Catechuma is a word occurring in Gal. vi, 6: "Let
him that is instructed in the word communicate to him that instructed
him in all good things." In the same sixth chapter the Apostle
continues : "Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For what things
a man shall sow those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in
his flesh, of the flesh also shall he reap corruption. But he that
soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting. And
in doing good let us not fail, for in due time we shall reap not
failing." These words lay the basis of all justice. They point
at a duty to be fulfilled as well as a contract to be kept. In all deal-
ings with men there is undoubtedly a contract of some kind implied
or expressed. In every attitude we assume or find ourselves in,
toward God the same idea prevails. All human activity, that is,
all deliberate human activity in all times and in all spaces, is an
effort either to obtain or bestow justice. It has been defined by
St. Thomas to be a perpetual and persistent desire to give to all
collectively and individually what to them belongs. It is a virtue.

178 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

he says, because it makes its possessor righteous and perfects his
work. Among all the virtues it is pre-eminent.

Applying these notions to the catechumen and the catechist, evi-
dently the catechumen is entitled to something from the catechist,
and the catechist is entitled to something from the catechumen.
When both the teacher and the taught find their communication un-
broken, undoubtedly they are filling the ends, at least some of the
ends, of justice. Their relations are based on some kind of a contract.
This contract, to put it plainly, seems to be that the teacher will do
all in his power to impart Christian doctrine, and the pupils will do
all in their power according to their condition and age not to frus-
trate his purpose. Honesty unmistakable is supposed to pervade all
their actions toward each other. This is the case in all teaching.
Those who teach practically agree with the parents and the chil-
dren themselves to educate those intrusted to them. But the con-
tract is not a one-sided one. The children and their parents are
equally included. This is a truth which is not brought home
frequently enough or with sufficient emphasis to parents and to
children. The child may do much to hinder the proper work of the
master, but not a tithe as much as it is in the power of parents to
prevent. If this were kept more constantly in mind than it is, the
atmosphere would not be so rife with unjust criticism. In the main,
it would seem to be the fact that there are fewer teachers unmind-
ful of their obligations than there are unconscientious parents.

The child is father of the man, this is true in more senses than the
one intended by the poet. The child nowadays is not only fashioning
his own manhood, but he is father and mother of his own father and
mother in the imperious way in which he compels them to execute
his commands, no matter how disastrous he and they know the con-
sequences will inevitably be. Parents will be punished for rn?^ny

JUSTICE

179

things, but for no one thing more than for their neglect of their
children. This is equally true of those, of all those, wht) have care
of souls. Moved by this St. John Chrysostom, not rashly, as he
himself writes, not rashly but as he feels and is convinced, uttered
that horrifying menace against pastors. It is to be remembered
that he made this threat to awaken all priests who might be mind-
less of their obligation, but he says it is meant not so much for those
whose lives are unedifying as for those who do not prevent the sins
of souls given over to their care. No neglect is comparable to the
neglect of catechism, and following closely is the conduct of the
catechist who forgets the obligation of his position, and through
lack of zeal or through indolence of any kind performs carelessly
his allotted task.

The teacher is under contract with God and with the Church
to plant, and plant deeply, the seeds of Christian doctrine in
the minds of children. The nature of this contract becomes
serious when it is considered that if it is not adhered to, the sou<ls
of so marFy will be lost to God and to the Church, or if not lost will
depart in so many deplorable ways from high ideals of life and
conduct. It certainly is not a slight misdemeanor to break an agree-
ment which involves so many and so much. Justice, therefore, is
a virtue eminently necessary to and befitting a teacher, and above all
a Catechism teacher. His fidelity to God and to His Church loyally
kept, there will not be any danger of his becoming disloyal to his
children and to their parents. The contract covers a large area
and the interests at stake are commensurate with that area — in that
area are God, the Church, the children, the parents and himself,
and all the consequences they entail. The more we penetrate the
true nature of this engagement the more hugely does the responsi-
bility of the catechist and of all teachers bulk.

i8o CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

The children, with all their rights as well as with all their hopes
and fears, are never to be lost sight of. They have the right to exact
from their teacher a clear knowledge of their faith — such a knowl-
edge as shall enable them to defend and to practise it under ordinary
circumstances, such a knowledge as will make them glad and proud
of it. They are entitled to a full measure of justice at the hands of
their instructor. They are entitled to his good opinion of them until
they forfeit it. They have a right to his good word as long as they
do nothing to lose it. They have a right to his attention, to his im-
partial attention, to the same attention he bestows on others. He,
as a consequence, is in duty bound to harbor no suspicious thought
of them, to frame no rash judgment against them. He must not
defile their reputation. If he says a calumnious word of them,
he is bound to retract and to retract plenarily. The duty of a
master is a difficult one, but so noble and so ennobling.

What is to be said of the justice from the children to the teacher?
Children are lynx-eyed and they instinctively grasp everything. If
their master has an abiding desire to be just in all things toward
them he may make mistakes, but the children will condone because
they know the real man who is behind the mistakes. Let him be just
and they will be just; unsuspicious and they will be unsuspicious.
If a master only knew what a power for molding is his ! He
would look upon his mission as the sublime one it is and he would
place his life as high as his mission. "For what things a man
shall sow, those also shall he reap. For in due time we shall reap,
not failing." What more can we think or say?

COOPERATION. i8i

X. COOPERATION

The conspicuous virtue of justice — ^the virtue which balances all
the worlds — is an attribute of God. His justice is the exemplar on
the mountain up to which all must look. Our justice must be meas-
ured by and modeled on His. This, while a terrifying, is at the
same time a very consoling truth. Terrifying because "with
patience stands He waiting, with exactness grinds He all"; con-
soling, because whatever help we need He will give and whatever
sacrifices we make He will remunerate us for, and whatever our
merits, not an iota of reward will He deprive us of. This is espe-
cially worth remembering, when engaged in work that is essentially
the business of the Father. "Well done thou good and faithful
servant," is the most precious recompense man has it in his power
to receive, and the higher the service the more splendid the guerdon.
How high is the service of those whose life work it is to teach
religion clean and undefiled before God ! Of them His justice pro-
claimeth that "they shall receive an hundredfold and shall possess
life everlasting." This proclamation concerns chiefly priests and
religious, but the overflow of the hundredfold will surely fall in
graded measure upon those who help the ministers of the Church
in the necessary but arduous task of catechetical work. The con-
sideration of all this should inspire all engaged in it to untiring
labor in their special field. It should inspire, too, plenary coopera-
tion— cooperation indefatigable, harmonious and intelligent.

The first fruit of cooperation is unity and from unity there springs
a strength which makes for success. The scattering of forces is the
prelude to losses and absolute defeat. In Catechetics there is one

i82 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

unfailing source of unity and of that unity of action without which
there is no genuine working together. That source Ues sparkUng
and full in the oneness of the Church, which is one, because there
is the one Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and father of all,
who is above all and through all and in us all. The unity of faith
means unity of doctrine compelling all to belie«^e and teach the
same truths and no others. That this is an unfailing fountain of
strength is apparent. In a battle, what nerves men's arms and stimu-
lates more robust energy, more aggressive activity than the knowl-
edge that all have come from the same country, are fighting for the
same cause and are looking forward to the opening of the same
gates of triumph? All catechists are one, therefore, in mind and
this harmony of thought, if skilfully directed, must inevitably result
in cooperation. There are many elements to be reckoned with in
this so essential factor in all successful pedagogy. There are the
director, the teachers, the parents, and lastly the children.

As a guiding principle, it must be admitted that at the bottom and
at the top and throughout all the fabric there must be found subor-
dination. There must be a leading, an authoritative agencyv There
must be a head. There must be a force competent to swing har-
moniously and vigorously all the auxiliaries. Individuality must not
be obliterated and the compelling hand must be gentle and strong
and deft. The director is this propelling focal energy. From
him all action must proceed as radii from a center. The im-
portance of his position, while it makes him finally responsible,
throws upon him the largest burden of the travail. It will be-
long to him sometimes to mold, sometimes to repair, always to
have an eye upon every part of the vast machinery. His most
frequent function will be that of lubrication which literally means
casting oil on waters that have an inherent tendency to be troubled.

COOPERATION 183

It is his right to demand intelligent obedience and to quell all
refractoriness. His rank is supreme though by no means enviable.
As he is, are all his subordinates. They are strong, they are weak,
they are lax, they are careless, incautious and imprudent, in the
measure in which he exhibits these qualities or these defects. It
is not difficult to perceive that the eyes of all in the school, of
teachers and of scholars, are to be kept fixed upon him. Further,
it is clear that the director must be a priest. His dignity, in this
wise, will help in untold ways, to create an atmosphere of respect
and of order. He will be able to impress upon his subordinates the
nature of their attitude toward him. Implicit must be their follow-
ing in their respective classes of all his wishes. Opposition of any
kind is ruinous. Counterplans are disastrous. The obedience and
respect they give him will be the measure of the submission and
respect of their own pupils.

Perfect cooperation supposes not only harmony between the
director and the teachers, but also, and very imperatively, harmony
among the teachers themselves. Contentions are to be abomi-
nated. "Six things there are which the Lord hat'eth and the
seventh his soul detesteth. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands
that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked plot's,
feet that are swift to run into mischief. A deceitful witness that
uttereth lies and him that soweth discord among brethren" (Prov.
vi, 16). Sympathetic collaboration will prevent many evils and
lighten many burdens. Strife is the parent of much wretched-
ness, and jealousy is the enemy of peace and happiness. This
dwelling together in unity is a well-spring of much that the
heart craves. Individual effort will contribute a great deal toward
this spirit of union. It is well to bear in mind the advice of St.
Augustine: "In things certain, unity; in things uncertain, liberty;

i84 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

in all things, charity." The parents are not least among the co-
operators. In fact they would seem to come, as contributors to this
much to be desired consummation, immediately after the director.
How much dealing they should have with individual teachers must
depend on the method of discipline which is followed. Generally
speaking, their cooperation should be restricted to intercourse with
the director. In his hands alone all the punitive arrangements
should be. Punishment and reward he alone should control. Such
a plan should not be viewed with disfavor by the teachers. It is
a plan which relieves them of much vexation of spirit and is a
forceful deterrent from partiality which always antagonizes justice
and which is a curse falling on him who gives and on him who
takes.

The cooperation of fathers and mothers is absolutely nec-
essary. The director and his teachers are helpless without it.
There is no task harder or more ungrateful than the task which the
director has to perform in his endeavors to induce the parents to be
vigilant over their children in bringing them outside of school
hours to spend the allotted time in preparing their Sunday school
work and in compelling their attendance at the Catechism classes.
The refusal to identify tliemselves with the director on all that ap-
pertains to the religious instruction of their children is, perhaps, the
greatest obstacle to success. This refusal is becoming more and
more prevalent and is responsible for the many spiritual disorders
which are becoming epidemic among so many Catholic children.
This disinclination on the part of parents to conform with the ex-
press injunctions of the director is lamentable and is answerable
for the lack of cooperation on the side of the children.

Punctuality in attendance and the necessary study of their Cate-
chism lessons and attention in class hours fill out the measure of the

COOPERATION 185

children*s obligations. Let the parents see to it that they attend and
that they study and the rest may be left with fullest confidence in
the hands of the director and of the teachers. If the parents are
remiss in this, they are doing their strongest toward rendering
Catechetics a lost art, the Sunday school a memory and the Church
another Rachel lamenting for her children because they are not.
But the mercy of God is above all His works and His love for His
Church will come to the rescue.

i86 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XI. SUCCESS

Spiritless must every effort be that is not actuated by the desire
of success ; and the keener that desire, the more enviable the success.
The phrase, "Nothing succeeds Hke success'* is not altogether
tautological, because it is true that success is the cause of success.
It has a teleological force. It is an end and possesses the nature of
an end, which, as ethics and experience have established, is the first
thing in the intention, though the last thing in the execution.
It is the end which gives the impulse to the movement. It seems to
be behind and before, it seems to push and to pull, it is somewhat of
a power-house. There is no power so cogent or so peculiar as an
end. It is the last thing reached and it gives the first impulse.
The end is potent. All the sacrifices of the Man-God — all the wring-
ing of His heart were the outcome of the end. All this is true of
success. In fact we must say that success and end are identical,
and so all that may be predicated of an end in view, may be
enunciated of success. There is a good end and there is a bad
end. There is a success which is a glory, and there is a success
which is a shame. There is nothing more dismal than failure, notli-
ing so bright as success. Yet, there is a sucess which it were bet-
ter not to have, which were worse than failure.

Wealth, position, pleasure are eminently desirable, but there is a
wealth that is worse than poverty, and a position worse than servi-
tude, and a pleasure than which agony is preferable. The end
and, therefore, success, is not made up of itself alone. There are
the means which must never be left out of the count. No matter
how estimable the end, or how high, if the means are vile, then

SUCCESS 187

success is disreputable and vile as well. It is when discovered in
this light that the success of so many is the rankest failure. There
is tainted wealth, there is stolen position, and there is a pleasure
that is the uncrowning of manhood and the bestializing of humanity.
All the successes of this world are tantamount to failure, when
men miss the goal of their being and of all its powers. Yet suc-
cess and the desire of success must not be minimized. Success
means the conquering all the resistance which may obstruct one's
path toward a desired achievement. It is more commendable when
the obstacles are more numerous. It is highest success when it has
been won in spite of repeated failures, when the courage has never
flagged and when effort never relaxed, for the truest of a man is
to hope against hope and to pluck success out of the very heart of
failure.

In Christian pedagogy there is success which is throbbing with
stimulation, and, if in Christian pedagogy there is one branch suc-
cess in which means the victory which overcometh the world, that
branch is Catechetics. The aim of Catechetics is to bring before
the powers of the young, the basis upon which all uprightness is
built, the motives for righteousness, to show that the lowest depth
of unreasoning is reached by those misshapen lives which are not
in harmony with its principles; to make clear that man's goodness
is man's perfection of his highest parts; that the peoples and indi-
viduals who are not in tune with the principles which it inculcates
are retrogressive; that irreligion and immorality are identical, and
that it makes for a brighter state of things; that it manifests the
commands of the Maker. To bring about all this, or to bring
about only a part of all this, is certainly incentive more than suffi-
cient to make efforts which will never grow unstrenuous until suc-
cess in this particular field is reaped.

1 88 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

The catechist may fancy the little that he does is hardly worth
while. This is a temptation, and among temptations one most
frequent and one as diabolical as it is frequent. Success before the
Lord is not what we have done, but what we have tried to do.

There is a passage in one of Trollope's volumes which portrays
the zeal of a Catholic priest : *'He had but one duty before him —
to do his part in bringing the world over to his faith. It might be
that, with toil of his whole life, he should convert but one — that he
should but half convert one, that he should no more than dis-
turb the thought of one so that future conversion might be possible.
But even that would be work done. He would sow the seed, if it
might be so, but if it were not given him to do that, he would at
any rate plough the ground." This is in strict reason, and accord-
ing to the strictest teachings of our faith, and it applies to all
kinds of workers in whatever part of the vineyard of the divine
Lord.

It is consoling to know that it is only the work done that counts,
and we w^ill find that when all the things of earth are made mani-
fest in the searching light of another sphere, we will find that it
is only the work done that tells, that succeeds. It is demonstrable
from all this that the catechist, be he priest or layman, has this
privilege in his special employment, the privilege of being secure
against all failure, if he but does with his best effort that which
lies before him to be done. In no other work and among no other
workers does this guarantee exist. Does it exist in commercial,
political, literary or scientific life? Can it be found in any other
kind of pedagogy? Consoling as this knowledge is, there is some-
thing threatening when the work is not done. Again, even this
view is a further motive for waking up, and gives added strength
for the task. If it were necessary to make a plea in favor of inde-

SUCCESS 189

fatigable labor there is one eloquent enough in the words of one
who defined genius as an enormous capacity for work:

"Labor is discovered to be the grand conqueror enriching and
building up nations more surely than battles."

Theory is one thing and practice is another. But there are
theories and theories. There are theories which build up dream-
worlds and fill them with idlers and people them with Utopians.
There are theories, too, which are built upon the experience of the
centuries and to repeal them is to contradict the whole past and
to prepare the way for a chaotic future. But the view that success
is the child of unremitting labor, is a view which has been tried
and not found wanting. Time and time again do we find
Scripture pronouncing that sloth has never produced, and will
never produce, aught but weeds. "If thou be diligent, thy har-
vest shall come as a fountain, and want shall flee far from thee."
"Where there are no oxen the crib is empty, but where there is
much corn there the strength of the ox is manifest." These
utterances are not inspired only, but they are confirmed by multi-
tudinous happenings in the history of the race. Success will crown
the man whose hands have followed the dictates of his reason. But
that man must address his whole being to his work. It must be the
outcome — that work of his — of his mind, of his senses, and above
all of his will. It is the will that makes the man and directs all
his energies. When a man puts all his life into action, then there
can be one issue, and one issue only — not defeat, but victory. But
his efforts demand all his life — his physical, his intellectual, and
chiefly his moral life. His thoughts will bring forth abundance,
and his piety will make that abundance fruitful and perennial. His
work will rear up the only structure worth upbuilding, that which
is built upon the rock and defies time and storms and all decay.

190

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XII. PREPARATION FOR RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

The preparation required for instructing the young in the truths
of their faith is very much akin to the preliminary work which the
precursor felt he was called upon to perform. His was the voice
of one crying in the wilderness : "Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every
mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be
made straight, and the rough ways plain" (Luke iii). Really, this
admonition of John the Baptist is a compendious declaration of all
the catechist has to do, as well as of all the difficulties he has to
overcome. The children who sit in the presence of him who teaches
Catechism are as motley, as undisciplined, and as ignorant a crowd
as that by whom the prophet was confronted when he began his
missionary career. There is the same crookedness of mind, there
are the same depths of ignorance, the same mountains and hills of
untutored and restless dispositions, the same roughness as well as
the same stubborn disinclination. Moreover, the object to be ob-
tained is identical; that "all flesh shall see the salvation of God."
Nobody would dare enter a field so bristling with difficulties without
considering how they are to be met and overcome. The dangers are
manifold, and above all there is the danger, which is the chief one,
of so affecting these newcomers that religion and all that appertains
to it may become, to their uncultivated palates, of all things the
most unsavory; there is the danger that through unwise ministra-
tions they may run the risk of never seeing the salvation of God.

Only the one who knows not, only the one who has not calculated

PREPARATION FOR RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 191

all the chances for good or evil, would (Jare to enter such a domain
without much thought arid much deliberation and much anxiety;
yes, and without much prayer. No one but the inconsiderate one
would jump into such an arena unarmed. Yet there is much to be
regretted on this score, and many and many a young heart has
been hardened forever against influences which, wielded by deft
hands, would have softened them and won them forever to a tender
affection for the Church and all that it has to bestow. It makes no
difference what be the grade of the matter to be imparted, the same
serious forethought is absolutely necessary. It may be a prayer
class, or a first Confession class, or a first Communion class, or a
Confirmation class, or a perseverance class, the same conditions ob-
tain. Preparation is absolutely necessary. This preparation supposes
that the teacher is master of his subject, master in memory and mas-
ter in understanding. Let it be the case that his work is limited
to the making his boys and girls memorize their prayers. It seems
laughable to say that he should know his prayers himself. It cer-
tainly is not a thing to stir laughter, if he stumbles, if for example
he has forgotten how to make the sign of the Cross, that sublime
preliminary to all prayer. Yet such ludicrous exhibitions have oc-
curred in the classroom. There is no ridiculous manifestation
which has not been made and which will not be made by an over-
confident teacher. To teach anything, the thing taught must be
known, and must be known so well that it will be impossible that,
even for an unconscious second, it will be unremembered. This is
especially so when the tasks are mere memory tasks. Nor should
the prayers remain very long, even for the youngest children, in
the memory stage. Little by little, piecemeal, should the explana-
tion of the words learned by heart be imparted. This opening of
young minds can not be done offhanded, preparatory work is

192 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

needed, and the preparatory labor for this is not so easy as it may
appear.

A previous examination of the expressions used in the prayers
will suggest the necessity of breaking up the long words, of sub-
stituting familiar synonyms, of connecting them with some or
other term, which will serve as a help to fastening them and their
meaning everlastingly in the memory.

Children pray so heedlessly because there is no signification for
them in the words they employ. In fact, how often is it due to the
carelessness of the teacher that these young tongues give utterance
to syllables, or combinations of syllables, which are not only devoid
of sense, but form a counter-sense, and when heard, are in the last
degree, and pitifully so, absurd and ridiculous. It is very often the
custom to deliver over these tenderlings to the uncertain solicitude
of boys or girls very little older than themselves. Harmful in the
extreme is this custom. The vigilance of the director will find that
his duty has to be exercised more in these classes than in the others.
How often have not priests been forced to listen in Confession to
acts of contrition which have not contrition in them save in the
good intention of the penitent.

In the public singing of children, or in the public recitation of the
essential prayers, how often the attentive ear detects words, or
rather a jumble of syllables that, if written down as sung or prayed,
would expose the child to censure and, by implication, would involve
in a worse reproach those who had to do with his upbringing in
religious instruction. Much more might be said relatively to want
of preparation on the part of the teacher in tliis foundation of all
catechetical education. All that has been put forward is applicable,
as a matter of course, to the higher branches of these instructions.
To frame or help frame a strong will in the line of right conduct is

PREPARATION FOR RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 193

the end of Christian pedagogy. The will can not be strengthened
without tlie illumination of the mind. The understanding of the doc-
trine of the Church must precede the accepting of it, and the under-
standing of the Sacraments must antedate their reception, and the
understanding of the nature of duties and obligations must come be-
fore their performance and fulfilment. The lack of this knowledge
has been the cause of much errancy in faith and morals. Whence we
are to conclude that, if the teacher of these subjects appreciates the
situation, he will realize at once that he can not make clear what is
half cryptic to himself. That he must study will be his first deduc-
tion, and that he must so study that he becomes master will be his
next, and that he must so master that he can impress indelibly his
knowledge on others will be his final inference.

As the teacher works, his class will work with him. It is a pity
that the contagion or infection, call it what you will, of example
in the teacher is not more widely understood. In fact, the teacher
makes his own atmosphere, and he gets from his class chiefly what
he brings to it. If he brings knowledge, from it he will receive
knowledge; if he brings understanding, understanding will be re-
turned to him from his pupils. They will give him back wisdom
for wisdom, piety for piety, and preparation for preparation. Better
than all else, his memory will be perpetuated through the Catholic
demeanor of those whom he taught how to pray to their God, how
to believe in, and love and give glory to, their Church.

194

CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XIII. BIBLE HISTORY

The Bible was written and compiled by authors providentially
selected, directed and illuminated by the spirit of God. It did not
come into its present shape by hazard. These statements imply that
there is discussion of some kind agitating the world of thought
and religion. It is a much abused work, and that it is a volume still
claiming attention and authority, holds a suggestion that there is
something about it which makes for indestructibility, a something
that hedges it; something like adversity that conserves It, rough-
hew it as we will. Catholics are of one mind concerning it. Here
and there, however, there are groups of literati, they can hardly
be called theologians, who have advanced, and still enunciate, con-
clusions at variance with the accepted doctrines of the Church.
The Church has come to the rescue of the faithful^ and let it be
hoped to the rescue of many among the unfaithful and especially
of many of the disloyal, in an encyclical as well as in a syllabus.
The gist of these utterances was a reiteration of the old truths that
the sacred Scriptures and the dogmas of the Church are divine. It
is this superlative excellence of the Scriptures which must be im-
pressed upon the young. The Bible must be the book of books for
them, and no respect they may show it can be exaggerated. No
better way for this consummation can be devised than the study
in the Catechism classes of the Bible history. Bible history and
the history of the Bible, though distinct, help to the better under-
standing of each other. Neither useless nor out of place would
it be, to instruct the young as to the first striking fact in relation to

BIBLE HISTORY 195

the Bible, the fact that in olden, as well as in modern, times the Bible
was treated with the utmost reverence by all, of no matter what
degree or condition ; that it was just as sacred to the king as to the
peasant, to the slave as to the master.

Children will drink in eagerly all that is told them about the keep-
ing and the handing down from generation to generation of these
precious heirlooms of the world. They will appreciate that
neither gold nor silver, nor precious stones were anything but
dross in comparison with them. It will not be impossible for
even the youngest to realize how much joy the words of in-
spiration have brought to all in moments when everything was
dark ; how many sinners they brought back to God ; how they taught
so many to live well, and to die without any fear but in the confi-
dence that death meant God and heaven and tlie angels, and it all
forever. They will learn with facility^ as well as profitably, how
the Church took care of the Bible from the very beginning and
watched over it ; how the Church fought battles for it, and how the
Church to-day holds it in veneration. The solicitude of the Church
for the Bible is apparent In so many ways. So fondly, too, that she
never lets it out of her sight; so fondly, that the Missal and the
Breviary are crowded with selections from the Old and the New
Testament. They must be taught that the Church is the divinely
appointed guardian of Holy Writ. In this way it will not easily
slip their memory that what the Church says of the Bible is the
truth, and the only truth about it, and that if any man contradicts
the Church concerning this Book he Is not stating the truth, but
is in error, and sooner or later will find himself in danger of being
condemned by that Church.

An introduction of this nature to the study of Bible history will
whet the appetites of the young and make them eager to become

196 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

acquainted with the men and women, and with the sayings and
doings of the men and Women, whose story is told in the hallowed
pages of that volume which they have been trained to place first
among all the volumes of the world, that have been, are and yet
will be. They can not think so highly of the Bible without esteem-
ing that Church to which that .wonderful book has been entrusted.
From the very beginning they must gather that for them the
Church is everything, is father, and mother, and family, and coun-
try for them ; that, though the Bible is a wonderful possession, it is
not the Church; that their thought should be the thought of St.
Augustine, who exclaimed that the Church was his teacher, and that
he would not believe the Scriptures unless he was bidden to do so
by a church that can neither deceive nor be deceived. The proper
relation between Bible and Church must be insisted on, and thus
the love for the Church will not lessen their love for the Bible ; but,
on the contrary, their love for the Bible will be according to the
measure of their love for the Church.

The study of Bible history may be begun in the very lowest class
of Catechism, and with the very youngest children. Prayer saying,
as it is carried on, and as it can not help being carried on, in the
prayer class, will soon weary unto death those restless bodies. We
know how soon a story will make them drop all their fatigue and
crowd around the narrator. There are many sources whence inter-
esting narratives may be derived, but is there any source so brim-
ming as Bible history ? These little boys and girls can not read, but
they can remember, and if they are told that on the next Sunday
any one of them may be asked to repeat what was recited from
Scripture, may be asked to tell the story in their own way, it
will not seldom happen that the catechist will be surprised into
pleasant wonder and the companions into glad attention as the tiny

BIBLE HISTORY

197

catechumen recites his or her tale. Bible history is useful for all.
In advanced classes a different treatment of the subject is required,
but, no matter how advanced the classes, the elementary principle
of all pedagogy must be adhered to, and the instruction furnished
must be interesting as well as useful.

There are many Bible histories published. It is scarcely neces-
sary to say that, no matter what their style, they will never equal the
simple beauty of the Scripture narrative. This suggests the benefit
that might accrue from comparing the recital of the text-book
with that of the Bible. Besides increasing tlie love of the class-
members for Holy Writ^ it will help toward familiarizing them with
its unique language and with itself.

Non-Catholics are credited with a better knowledge of the Scrip-
ture tlian Catholics have. This, perhaps, was true in other days,
but the pastors have thrown themselves with such devotion into
Sunday school work,-«o much enthusiasm has been aroused and
organization has become so perfect, that if the reproach is a justi-
fiable one, in a very short time it will be groundless. The Bible
will most surely become in the very safest way the classic of the
Sunday school. This transformation will take place speedily and
then will flourish His cause, who is the chief glory of all its pages,
Christ the Master and Redeemer.

198 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XIV. CATECHISM

The term Catechism implies three things. It signifies the book
itself, the class in which the book is used and explained, and the
method of instruction. Such a comprehensive theme can be touched
on, in pages like these, only in a very summary fashion. As a book,
it is a popular manual, an exact and accurate resume of Chris-
tian Doctrine. It is not supposed to be a scientific or scholastic
treatise. It does not contain the opinions which prevail or are
discussed among the learned. It aims at presenting only the estab-
lished truths of dogma and morality. Children and adults, in
fact all the faithful are supposed to be able to find within it all
that it is necessary to know, and all that it is necessary to believe
and practise in order to reach heaven, or rather not to lose the
celestial recompense through voluntary or culpable ignorance. So
much for the general idea. In form it should be clear, precise, easy
to grasp and to remember, for the Catechism is intended to be learned
by heart. In form, also, it is made up of question and answer, and
constitutes a sort of dialogue between the Master and the disciples.
It is short, yet rich in matter, because the catechist is expected to
explain it and develop it aloud for the instruction of the hearers.
The Catechisms placed in the hands of children offer great variety.
There is, however, uniformity as to the plan, which is to propose,
first, the truths to believe, or the articles of the Creed, then the
precepts to be obeyed; that is, the Commandments of God, and of
the Church, and, lastly, the means to be taken in order to believe
and to practise ; that is, prayer and the Sacraments.

CATECHISM

199

In the Vatican Council it was decided to set on foot a project
for the composing of a small Catechism for the Universal Church.
This much we glean from Vacant's "Dictionnaire Theologique."
All who are interested are awaiting eagerly for an universal Cate-
chism, and are convinced that when it appears it will be a manual
distinguished for simplicity of language, brevity of treatment, and
accuracy of doctrine. How, from a compendium of this kind, there
can easily be developed larger and more comprehensive and more
explanatory volumes is not difficult to understand. How many
failures exist at the present time is as lamentable as it is evident.
Some of the Catechisms which are given the children have lost
sight of the vernacular, and would be almost as profitable if written
in some rare idiom. How much labor they unnecessarily exact from
the teacher, aiid how much they mystify beginners, is a matter
of general remark. There were, in other days, Catechisms in English
which oflFered the truths of our religion in such plain terms that
they were a joy forever. One other benefit they conferred. When-
ever a text from Holy Writ contained the answer, that text was
given, and when the children who were fortunate enough to have
studied these Catechisms grew up, they were pleasantly surprised to
find that, without being aware of it, they had been quoting Scrip-
ture from their earliest ye^rs. Such Catechisms were quiet monitors
for the teachers; silently warning them that the best language to
use, not only in catechetical, but in all instruction, is that which
is made up of short and, for that reason, intelligible words.

The literal history of the Catechism is as instructive as it is inter-
esting. In the first years of the Church, in the absence of printing,
Catechism was confined to oral teaching exclusively. How splen-
didly that task was performed, and how generously those eflForts
were responded to, is written large and bright in the acts by which

200 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

the martyrs, so numerous and so heroic, proved their loyalty to the
Church for which their, Catechism, such as the catechists of those
days presented it, prepared them. Pedagogy embraces all sciences
and all knowledge, but without the truths of Catechism, it will never
work successfully for the uplifting of the peoples. Catechism,
and the doctrine it imparts, is the Baptism, not of John, but of
Christ, which christianizes all education. Taken in this sense
Catechism is simply the bringing of the book, and all that it con-
tains, to the masses. The class has many forms, but the book and
the teachers are necessary for those results, without which the
Catechism itself would remain, in so many instances, a dead letter.
It is the class, or, rather, the book, the teacher, and the children,
that claims the deepest solicitude on the part of those whose duty
it is to see that souls take no harm. The work which is theirs, is
neither trifling in itself nor in its aims.

Organize the Sunday school, and the Church will take care of
its own interests. Make that organization secondary and a blight,
in some way or other, will fall upon all other ecclesiastical ministra-
tions. A flourishing Sunday school proclaims a flourishing church,
and a flourishing parish, and lays the foundation-stone of a flour-
ishing Catholic community.

In earlier days the missionary Jesuits, who went among un-
civilized peoples, with their zeal and their Catechism, so fired the
souls of those whom they were evangelizing, that among tribes who
numbered thousands and tens of thousands and more, days and
weeks and months passed, in a fervor so great, and a conscientious-
ness so delicate, that not one mortal sin was committed. Can any
civilization, however vaunted, boast a progress so admirable? It
was simply a reproduction of those early years of the Church,
when the first converts were one soul and one mind, and loved God

CATECHISM 20I

and one another. No limits are assignable to the moral benefits of
religious instruction, prudently organized and zealously imparted.

After the book and the class ; or, rather, along with the book and
the class, method is the thing. The little book still retains the name
by which it was called from the beginning, and that name empha-
sizes the method which has always been so fruitful — a method which
no innovation can improve. The method is a communicative one,
it supposes an interchange of word and thought between the Cate-
chist and the catechumen. It was oral. It was oral not only in
the sense that the teaching was vocal, but in the sense that the
question of the teacher was included in the answer of the child.
There is more to this than catches the careless observer. It tells of
the vitality of the teaching of the teacher. It speaks of the con-
stant attention called for by the instructor, and given by the disciple.
In the making of many Catechisms this idea has been lost sight of
altogether, and in so much has their directive power been weakened.
The real working part of the class is a rapid-firing process, and
where memory and attention are concerned the process is an in-
valuable one, and must reap a rich harvest. After all, in the
matter of Catechism, memory is the faculty which has to be called
into action. Things memorized, though not understood at the
moment, will come back with understanding in later moments.
This much, in a very brief fashion, regarding the three notions
which the term Catechism is traditionally admitted to convey. A
triple notion each fraction of which designates an essential element
of catechetics. Which is the most important element ? We need the
book and the catechist and the scholars. Give us the trained and
zealous teacher, and the children will come, and the book will be to
them a priceless possession for all time.

202 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY,

XV. LITURGY

Catechetics embraces so many cognate subjects, and all of them
so important that a perfect catechist would necessarily be a man
of varied tastes, constant study and comprehensive scholarship.
Catechetics is the science of religion. In its elementary form it
seems to be so restricted that even a child might master it. That
limited matter which is treated in the early classes, in the classes
which aim at preparing the young for the intelligent and worthy
reception of the Sacraments, is limited for the pupils only, but not
for the teacher. To impart accurately the knowledge indispensable
for Confession, Communion and Confirmation necessitates a knowl-
edge far in excess of the contents of the brief manual. This is a
statement which is not difficult of verification. It is no exaggeration
to say that it is almost rash, if not dangerous, to leave the task to
any one who is not a theologian, for no mere tiro is a safe guide
among the multitudinous problems which are constantly surging
relative to Penance, to the Eucharist and to Confirmation. As
skilled theologians can not be had for this work, then the duty of
inspection and preventions falls more weightily and more constantly
on the shoulders of the directors. There are more radii and tangents
connected with the circle of Catechism than with any other branch
of education. What subject, it may be asked, is not touched upon
directly or indirectly by Catechism? If Catechetics has one thing
more than another in view, it is to so instruct the boy and the girl
that their minds will accept readily the doctrine of the Church and
their hearts warm toward all its customs and practises. It is for this
reason that no course of Catechetics is complete which does not

LITURGY 203

present to the learners all that concerns the Church, all its past and
present history, all its forms of private and public devotion, its
ritual and its liturgy. They must be taught that in a great organ-
ization such as the Church is, an organization which addresses itself
to the interests and the most momentous interests of men, an organi-
zation whose solicitude extends to the poor and to the rich, to the
young and to the old, there is no part of it which is trifling, there
is no part of its activity which must not in some way or other be
understood. The parts are in close, in the closest, connection. You
can not touch doctrines without the contact being felt by worship,
both public and private; there is no jar given to liturgy or ritual
the shock of which is not in some measure felt by the doctrine.

There is a tendency to exclaim against ritual and against liturgy,
against ceremony of all kind in religion. God is everywhere, we are
told, and the forests are His temple, and His shrine the blue dome.
Away, then, with cathedrals and churches ! God has made his own
basilica — it is as vast as space, and it is in every spot under the
sun or the moon or the stars. The people, some of them, may be
fooled all the time, all of them may be fooled some of the time, but
all the people can not be fooled all the time. The world in general
has formed its judgment about these expansionists, and understand
that where there are no temples, where there is no specified species
of worship, there is no religion and their god is a very vague some-
thing indeed. The intimate connection between the soul and the
body is considered and remembered in religion.

All knowledge comes from the senses. They influence thought,
and they in their turn feel the effect of the workings of the mind.
How many imposing conceptions about God and about man and
about the universe can be awakened by what the eye sees and the
ear hears are beyond enumeration. A lock of hair opens floods of

204 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

recollections in a mother's memory, and a simple Cross may bring
tears of gratitude or of repentance to many a human heart. Hence,
the liturgy, hence the ritual, hence the ceremonies of the Church.
The majesty of divine service impresses in a thousand stirring
ways and forces the soul with sweet compulsion to adore and fear
Him who alone is good, great, immense, almighty, and before whom
the whole world is "as the least grain of the balance, and as a drop
of the morning dew that falleth down upon the earth."

Some comprehension of the liturgy of the Church should be part
of every Catholic's equipment. The liturgy of the Church is the
prayers to be used in the divine service by the priest, or the cere-
monial to be followed in simple or solemn worship, or the different
rites which, during the ages since her establishment, have been
sanctioned by the Church. The unity of conception is the focal
wonder of that liturgy. Multitudinous are its parts, but most com-
pact is its wholeness. As a thought, as an inspiration, it is rhythmic.
Every whisper becomes more and more loud, till there is one con-
certed chorus, with strains from the living and the dead, strains
from martyr and virgin, and levite and bishop and pontiff, singing
Glory on the Highest, to the Highest; and odors in golden vials,
which are the prayers of the faithful falling down before the Lamb.
A perusal of any Mass, as it is in the Missal, is a doctrinal as well
as a literary lesson — if the essential lesson in letters is the lesson
of unity from which, as from a germ, buds and blossoms and
flowers and fruits grow — a growth of harmonious thought and
word.

Scripture is pressed into the service, and the prophets and the
law foretell, and the Gospels announce the coming of Him who re-
deemed all flesh. The significance of all that the Church does is
lost upon those who have not been taught the relation between

LITURGY 205

liturgy and dogma. This is sometimes, perhaps oftener than is
known, a reason why many absent themselves from Mass, and why
a great many stay from solemn Mass, and why a larger number
yet never assist at Vespers or Benediction or other lesser, if the
word may be tolerated, services. Mass to so many is such a hard-
ship, no matter how rapid in the saying. Solemn Mass is insuf-
ferable and unnecessary tedium, Vespers and Benediction a mean-
ingless gathering of devotees and women and children. Why is
this a fact? The answer is, because in the days when their minds
were receptive, with a receptivity that never returns, the chil-
dren were not made to see clearly all that these services were
as means of grace and as wells of refreshment for their souls and
the souls of all men, whatever their position, their condition or
their age. For adults who have missed all this vital instruction
there remains the remedy of preaching. Beyond a doubt, the
preacher can prove himself a powerful agent in implanting that
knowledge which brings so much benefit to those who have it.
Perhaps, though, it is a question whether those who need him mosf
will come to listen to his saving discourses. It can not certainly
be a question, however, whether his utterances will affect the adults
so nearly as these same men and women would have been in-
fluenced in the days when their minds and their hearts were young
and untainted. Really youth is the only seed time, every after
growth is from belated tilling. It is hot-house development, and
the plant is not so sturdy and the fruit has an artificial flavor.
Liturgy must be given its place in the Sunday school. It must
be made clear that Christ is the founder of the Church, that the
Church would be a failure without Christ, that the ofiice of the
Church is to give Christ, the real Christ, the living Christ, to all
her children. She does this through the Sacraments.

2o6 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

Among the Sacraments there is one more excellent than all thej
others, the Sacrament -that keeps Christ with us every hour of the
day and of the night. For that Sacrament altars and churches have
been built and made splendid, and for that Sacrament is the Mass
and all the prayers of the Mass and all the ceremonial of the Church.

CHURCH HISTORY

207

XVI. CHURCH HISTORY

The pedagogy which excludes history from its curriculum is in-
competent and inexcusable. The same censure must be passed upon
the Christian pedagogy which does not give it a fitting place in its
course of studies. The value, nay, the necessity, of history in edu-
cation is indispensable. What ecclesiastical history means for the
Catholic is better understood than expressed. It is the story of the
Church of God. What a large figure that institution has been and
is and will be in world records is the marvel of the ages. "As Jesus
Christ, the God incarnate, is the center of all history, so the divine
institution of the Primacy of the Holy See and the independence of
the Catholic Church, is the center of the history of the Christian
era. Most of the great historical contests since the coming of
Christ were waged around the Rock of Peter. It is impossible to
understand and appreciate the course of human events in its proper
meaning and character without giving full consideration and weight
to these two central facts of history." If this be true, and the
annals of twenty centuries are there to prove it, how logical the
inference that the Catholic man or woman who is ignorant of the
Church's history has a mind barren of much useful knowledge, and
is deprived of an incentive to a justifiable pride in his or her spiritual
ancestry, as well as a stimulus to the loftiest kind of moral excel-
lence. The history of the Bible shows that we are the children of
God, the history of the Church reveals that we are the brothers of
Christ and the descendants of the saints. How bright every page of
those annals are with examples of unwavering faith, of the largest

2o8 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

charity, of a probity which startled the Gentiles, and of a courage
unalterable and invincible, traits of character as much, perchance
more, needed in these days in which we live. There are leaves and
lines in those chronicles which prudence will screen from the gaze
of the very young. When adult age has been reached it will do no
harm to throw open every fact to prepared minds. No matter how
read, unless misrepresented, there is no deed that does not redound
to the glory of the Church. Students have to be apprised of many
things. They must be taught to understand that the Church of
God, though a divine institution, is made for men, human beings
are its members, and, hence, a careful and clear distinction must be
drawn between the divine and the merely human element. There
have been scandals. They were foretold by Our Lord. They will
occur again and again in the Church. It must be emphasized that
churchman are not the Church. The Church is divine, imperishable,
inerrant. Churchmen are human, corruptible, and in every way
fallible. The Supreme Pontiff can never make a mistake when exer-
cising his function as universal teacher, can never teach an untruth
or command what is against morality. Outside of this office he is
a man, and, therefore, not impeccable. Ignorance produces lament-
able results, and among them none is more deplorable than the
facile quickness with which statements are admitted by children of
the Church against their mother. This admission is so frequently
a gross insult to history. It proceeds from many sources, the most
common one being an absolute no-knowledge of the past or the
present of the Church. It happens sometimes because Catechism
has never been properly known or because it has been entirely for-
gotten. It happens because non-Catholic influences are at work.
It is made, this admission, because there has been an unchristian
pedagogy injecting its poisonous fluids into mind and heart. Such

CHURCH HISTORY 209

a mind becomes blind. Such a heart becomes cold. It is made
because so weakened has the religious instinct become that the
yoke is too heavy to bear.

To be a Christian means restraint, a restraint which human na-
ture, unaided by religious principles and unsuccored by divine helps,
sooner or later must fling off. Where the perfect Christian instinct
is alive, the first impulse, when anything derogatory to the Church
is spoken, is to brand it as a lie. It is not always a lie, perhaps.
It is not sinning against the scientific principles of history to say
that generally it is a lie. What has to be stigmatized is the ready
acceptance it receives. One should be as sensitive about the reputa-
tion of the Church as one is sensitive about the reputation of a
mother. The becoming attitude when a vilifying statement has
been made against religion is to refuse to admit without proof, to
ask for proof ; in fact, to demand proof. When Church history has
been presented in its true light, the student knows what stand to
take, and, what is more, though he does not court attacks on his
faith, he is not dismayed. The experience of the past has proven
that for centuries history was a conspiracy against the Church. In
the huge bulk of manuscripts there is a seething mass of calumny
and slander. Scholars, not only those belonging to the Church, but
many who have no love for it, have been indefatigable in their ef-
forts to separate truth from falsehood and fiction. The truth is
gradually emerging. The instructor in Church history will eluci-
date all that is dark, and bring some kind of order out of chaos.
His pupils will be educated to know that terrible frailty has now
and then covered with foul blots ecclesiastical escutcheons. They
will learn that this brings no contamination to the doctrine or the
moral teachings of the Church. They will interpret things in the
light of the broad distinction that exists between the Church and

2IO CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

any member of it, be he highest or be he lowest. They will com-
prehend that the study of the Church's career through the ages is
not completed in the school room, that investigation, thorough and
patient and long, is needed for the truthful presentation of the
minutest points. They will be slow to admit what has been written
in the past, and just as hesitating to accept what is printed in the
present.

The daily newspapers are the diaries of the race. They will be
the material of the history of our own times. What a terrifying
outlook for the reputation of the nineteenth and the twentieth cen-
turies ! In half a century from to-day we will be seen by others
and as others see us. How many, if they saw their own composite
picture as drawn from journalistic items, would accept the portrai-
ture, and how many would fly in horror from the reproduction.
Difficult as it has been to reconstruct the past of the Church, the
difficulty is a small one compared with the perplexity which will
obscure and daze the mind of the writer whose task it will be to
peruse newspaper after newspaper in order to give to his readers the
real story of that past of the Church of which we are contemporaries.

Sad, indeed, would the mistake be to give no or little attention
to Church history in any and especially in Christian pedagogy.
The history of the Church is a strong demonstration of her divinity.
She has survived the onslaught of the gates of hell. Her past is
a guarantee of her future. As she has been, she is to be always.
Christ made His promise so many centuries ago. He has kept that
promise for twenty hundred years. What promise has ever been
secured and endorsed by such a duration as that? It has seen
dynasties and kingdoms rise, totter, disappear. She is as potent to-day
as she ever was. The Pope speaks and the nations pause to listen,
and more than two hundred and fifty million not only pause to

CHURCH HISTORY 211

listen, but to obey as well. What is a Christian if he knows not
the historical splendors of his Church? Poor and weak indeed.
But when he knows, who so justly proud and who so strongly de-
termined to hold fast by her in calm and storm, in life and in
death!

212 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XVII. PUBLIC PRAYER AND CONGREGATIONAL SINGING

Catechism teaches what is to be believed and what is to be done
in order to be saved. In teaching this, much is learned, but when
from theory a step is made in the direction of practise, then is
teaching made perfect. In both Testaments the necessity of prayer
is frequently and cogently urged. This necessity, which can not
be sufficiently impressed upon all, receives an impulse that is
salutary whenever the children are taught not only their prayers,
but are taught as well by exercise what use is to be made of those
prayers. Public prayer is prayer together, is the prayer which all
say in unison at the beginning and at the end of class or during
the services of the Church, at the daily or the Sunday Mass, or at
any of the liturgical functions, said at Vespers, Benediction or the
Stations of the Cross. The impressiveness of it is profound and
lasting. The moral uplifting of it is an influence that goes far
toward inculcating habits which later on will bear fruit in the indi-
vidual and the family. Family prayers are not the common exer-
cise they were or should be. A special blessing has been promised
to such gatherings, "for where there are two gathered together in
my name, there am I in the midst of them.*' Undoubtedly, the
larger the gathering the more efficacious will all petitioning be.
The most perfect of all public prayers is the Mass. It is not only
the most powerful of all intercessions, it is the epitome of all sup-
plication. It is propitiation and pleading and expiation and praise.
All public prayer should be conformed to it. The central influence
is the victim Christ, and so all things must be asked for through
Him. There is always a benediction attached to the mere presence

PUBLIC PRAYER AND CONGREGATIONAL SINGING 213

at Mass, but that benediction becomes richer in proportion to the
intimacy of the union between the people and the priest. It is
during this solemn function that public prayer has untold ad-
vantages. It is a growing custom for the boys and the girls to
unite in concerted prayer, with the celebrant, at certain parts of the
Holy Sacrifice. These voices proclaim in appropriate language
the meaning of this or that part of the great oblation. They
humbly prepare themselves, as the priest prays at the foot of the
altar; they raise their voices in exultant reverence at the Gloria in
Excelsis, they make their act of faith at the Credo; after bowing
down in worship at the Elevation, they join with him at the Pater
Noster and smite their breasts in a pleading for mercy at the
Agnus Dei, and after receiving Communion, spiritually or other-
wise, their tones are those of praise and thanksgiving for the great
privilege which has been theirs and the signal favor they have
received. This sends home the lesson of prayer, a lesson so needed
and so often forgotten. This is a lesson that is more eloquent than
the Catechism itself, than any word of the teacher. It is a lesson
which teaches not only what prayer is, but teaches how to pray,
which is of greater moment yet. "I had rather feel compunction
than know how to define it," said the author of the "Imitation of
Christ." It is better to pray with fervor than to be acquainted with
all the theology of prayer. Priests, while celebrating the holy Mass,
have been moved by the sound of the young voices raised in prayer
to the Lord. It has added to their own personal devotion. This
public praying in earnest, modulated cadence is becoming more and
more customary. The effect it has on adults who have been pres-
ent and listened to these outpouring is beneficial in the extreme.
The men and the women can not always attend the Mass of the
children, and it is to be regretted.

214 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY.

The query naturally suggests itself, Why can not the fathers
and mothers, the brothers and sisters, and friends and acquaint-
ances of these children, why can not the grown-up people be in-
structed to assist in the same way, that is, with public prayer, at
the Masses at which they are present, especially on Sundays and
holy days of obligation? There is no need to discuss the innumer-
able advantages which would be theirs if their attendance was made
earnest and devout by the recital in unison of invocations suited
to the various details of the Sacrifice. Such attendance would be
for them a class in Christian doctrine and a renewal of faith and
piety. Public prayer is, in a measure, an obligation. All intelligent
beings owe worship to the Creator, and all organized bodies — socie-
ties, towns, cities, governments, States, nations, families — ^because
they have their entity from the maker and depend upon Him, are
obligated, in some way or other, to acknowledge that dependence.
Strictly speaking, there should be adoration of some kind from the
whole nation and from each individual family. To-day the Church
is the only institution that, as a complete society, including authority
and all who live under that authority, offers public prayer to the
Almighty and insists upon all her children joining in it with her.

What has been expressed concerning public prayer might be said
of congregational singing. The Lord is to be worshiped in every
way, because in every way does He hold us in the hollow of His
hand, and without His conserving energy at every breath we draw
we would fall back into our original nothingness. He *'made all
things and without Him was made nothing that was made." Why,
then, should not our souls lift themselves up in songs of prayer as
well as in words of petition? The Church recognized the seemli-
ness of this from the beginning, and while she hails in melody the
Saviour who has come, the chosen people acclaimed the Messias

PUBLIC PRAYER AND CONGREGATIONAL SINGING

2^5

who was to be. Psalmody is as old as creation. The morning
stars sang as they witnessed the wonders of the Almighty, and the
angels raised their voices in hymns glorifying the wonders of the
newer creation. "Praise the Lord, O my soul; in my life I will
praise the Lord, I will sing to my God as long as I shall be." "My
heart is ready, O my God, my heart is ready. I will sing and re-
hearse a psalm. Arise, O my Glory, arise psaltery and harp. I
will sing a song to thee among the nations." Emotion's highest
expression is song. Song has been pressed into the service of the
world, it is the language of rejoicing, of festivity. Why not press
it into the service of God and of religion, for it is the language,
too, of peace and spiritual joy and thanksgiving and praise? Con-
gregational singing, in which all the attendants unite, is an elevat-
ing form of devotion. It is cheering and inspiring. It goes far
toward awakening instincts of religion, which have been dormant
for years. It has a doctrinal function likewise. Into sounds of
melody may be woven words of dog^a, words which, while they
instruct, leave some memory behind them and are not easily for-
gotten.

The voices of a congregation, be it large or be it small, are an
agency full of potentialities. They leave no one unmoved. But
it is as a form of public prayer chiefly that congregational singing
is commendable. Prayer is the best moment of the man, and it is
the best moment of men assembled together for worship. It is
only while at prayer that men are at their best, for it is only then
that the two highest faculties of man are engaged in the functions
that are highest. In prayer man spurns the earth, walks with
God, and his mind and his will are occupied with his highest, his
only good. Anything, then, which leads man up to the mountain
is to be approved and encouraged. When men forget to pray,

2i6 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY.

their condition is precarious. So, upon the child, must the neces-
sity and the privilege of coming into such close communion with
God, as is his privilege when he prays, be most deeply impressed.
His Catechism will teach him the theory of prayer, his instructor
will teach the practise, and among the helps at his disposal none
will be found more powerful than public prayer and congregational
singing.

ATTENTION

ii7

XVIII. ATTENTION

To win and to hold attention is the hallmark of the true teacher.
It is difficult to compass. It is more a gift than an acquisition. It
IS rather inborn than attained, though it is not easy to fix limits to
the effects of labor. It is not only a goal worth reaching; it is an
absolute necessity. With it comes success; without it there is only
failure in view. At no time is it easy of performance, and the
younger the student the harder it is to accomplish. As the mind
develops attention is more easily captured. In a class of adults
who have a fixed object in mind, in a class of men and women pre-
paring for some calling, in a class where future interests are in-
volved, the procuring of attention is not the task it is found to be
among younger students and under other conditions. The will of
the learner at a certain age can compel this concentration. Where
minds are the minds of the young, minds volatile, minds distracted by
every passing vision or fancy or notion, minds which are unable to
give to things their proper value, this stretching out of the intelli-
gence to grasp what is presented to it, is an effort that exceeds the
potentiality of those who are being educated. In their case appeals
to motives are almost in vain. Intimidation is often resorted to, but
with very poor success. Probably the hope of reward is a more
compelling force. In the case of the children in the lowest forms
in Sunday school it is futile to rely much upon them. The work
is solely in the hands of the teacher. What attracts in sensible
objects may allow us to conjecture with what qualities, concepts and
expressions are to be tricked out. Colors that are bright and sounds

2i8 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

that are startling engage their eyes and their ears. If it' were pos-
sible to transfer these - qualities to thought and speech, doubtless
their minds would be attracted. How much preparation this sup-
poses gives one an idea that the teacher, no matter what his subject,
has a wearying and wearing road to travel.

Teaching — that is, teaching worthy of the name — is not synony-
mous with indolence. The teacher who boasts of his career as of one
free from toil will not reap very rich harvests. It is a mind and a
body and a heart-racking avocation.

The kindergarten is an advance on all previous methods of educa-
tion, for it has found and methodized many little ways and means to
make the earliest days of training more pleasant and less laborious.
Young minds and young bodies tire quickly, and so from the be-
ginning the educators of all times have endeavored to discover a
path full of pleasant surprises. Doubtless the success has been great,
and doubtless the limits of that success have not yet been touched.
There is very little, if any, progress possible without attention. It is
the basis of all advance, and without it the boundaries of science
would never have been pushed to their present lines. The startling
inventions and the splendid discoveries of science and the immortal
works of art are, in the main, the outcome of attention. Newton
said that he had discovered the laws of universal attraction by
always thinking on the subject. In fact, every success that has been
won is an argument in favor of the importance of attention.

Inattention, on the contrary, has been, and will still be, the parent
of failure and disaster of every kind and in every order, individual,
domestic, social, national. Inattention is the excuse given for all
shortcomings, and there is no apology so frequent on the lips of
ofifenders as the expression, "I was not thinking." Culture, there-
fore, of attention is to be placed among the chief aims of pedagogy

ATTENTION 219

That culture must be begun, then, when there is the least expecta-
tion of success, that is, in the minds of children, minds whose abid-
ing characteristic is lack of attention. But that mind so barren, must
not be allowed to remain so. It is here that the work begins — that
work that makes such importunate and constant demands on skill
and on patience. Skill, that is, a knowledge of the situation and its
difficulties and a comprehension of plans to be devised and methods
to be applied, that skill will perceive that the start must be slow,
that all crowding of objects on the mind will repel and frustrate the
best intention.

The motto is : A little at a time and a tranquil repetition of that
little. The experiment must not be tried until it nauseates. Over-
loading stomachs brings on all the distress of indigestion, and over-
loading minds brings on mental lassitude and agony. The skilful
teacher is grateful for very small favors. He will sit, nurse-like, at
the bedside of this sleeping intelligence and patience and address
will be rewarded by a healthy awakening.

Yes, he must be thankful for what he obtains. He must remember
tliat the mental faculties are not in the start what they will be later.
It is very hard to decide whether the attention gotten in the begin-
ning is really attention. Some say that the attention of the child
is but the shadow and the phantom of genuine attention. It is rather
an involuntary or better, perhaps, if this be philosophically correct,
a half voluntary effort. There is very little reflection connected with
it, and so often it has the appearance of something impulsive, in-
structive and compulsory. It is enough t'o daunt the most robust
courage. But the fight is not a new one in the world. It is a fight,
moreover, which has been won in the past, and so there is encourage-
ment for the toilers in the field of education. It is a result worth
striving for. It is not a mean achievement, this rousing an intelli-

220 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

gence from its torpor.. No mean achievement at all is it, when we
reflect that so often an intelligence awakened has grown vigorous
and gone on its way like a giant rejoicing in its strength and exult-
ant in the conquests it has made in every province where it has the
right to go in and win. This youthful mind is not easily stirred into
action. It is very exacting. It clamors for vivid and strong im-
pressions. How persevering the professor must be when he is
forced to give life and dominance to things that he has been familiar
with since his own childhood, and which have lost all their freshness
and with which he has been gorged unto satiety. His saving reliance
is to look forward to the end. The end is so high, the end is so
momentous. This is superlatively true in catechetics. These ob-
stacles which have to be surmounted in all education must absolutely
be overcome where there is question of religious instruction. Peda-
gogical treatises have handled the present theme voluminously, and
have furnished an abundance of valuable suggestions. These sug-
gestions are, in most instances, a conscientious report of experience.
They are not to be dismissed lightly.

The genuine teacher will not trust to his own experience only,
and he will prize the hints that are scattered multitudinously up and
down in the vast variety of manuals to-day. The genuine teacher
will consult and will not spurn advice. Aloofness is to be con-
demned. Originality is not always safe. Yet individuality must
respect itself, and out of his own environment one will project
schemes that others might not profit by, but which, because they are
in a large measure his own, may be abundantly fruitful. He will
endeavor to have the character and the dispositions, the good and
the bad qualities of his charges before him like an open book. A
rich and inspiring volume they will prove for him. It will instruct
him, as he is getting ready his explanatory lesson, what to retain.

ATTENTION 221

what to adopt, what comparisons to employ — comparisons taken,
whenever possible, from the daily life of the children, their cares,
their anxieties, their sports, their amusements, their toys — what
language to use and what kind of questions to ask, and the sim-
plicity and directness and honesty of speech, look and gesture. Little
things seemingly all these, but seemingly only, for on them are
reared the superstructure of Church and home and country.

22 2 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XIX. THE PERFECT TEACHER

The statement that the perfect teacher has never existed is true,
absolutely speaking, because human nature has it's limitations, and
where there are limitations there can be no perfection. There have
been and there are professors who have proved and are proving
themselves all that can be reasonably desired or expected,

In an essay, entitled "Of Persons One Would Wish to Have
Seen," William Hazlitt quotes a remark of Lamb, who suggested
the subject, 'There is only one other person I can think of after
this," continued Lamb, but without mentioning a name, "that once
put on a semblance of mortality. If Shakespeare was to come into
the room, we should all rise up to meet him ; but if that person was
to come into this room we should all fall down and try to kiss the
hem of his garment." In this touching allusion the one to whom
all would pay this reverence was the divine Teacher, who became
man to teach men. It is to Him we must look for the ideal pre-
ceptor. He was the perfect pedagogue. Those who approach Him
approach perfection. "Learn of me," He has said. If we do not go
to His school we will fall very short of the type which, though
unreachable, is not inimitable. Not only has He said, "Learn of me,"
but He has also proclaimed, "Go and teach." If teaching is illumi-
nation and stimulation, if its object is to point out tlie good, to make
known the good and to make ardent and unflinching followers of
the good, then there has been no schoolmaster like Christ.

In His school the good which men had lost was outlined more
clearly and with greater simplicity than ever before. Its necessity
was emphasized. The struggle that the pursuit of it implied was not
painted in neutral tint's, but in vivid colors. He minimized none of

THE PERFECT TEACHER 223

the consequences of following Him. He predicted all the persecu-
tions which would overtake those who accepted his teaching. He
taught that it was fitting to love what the world and the flesh hated,
and to hate what the world and the flesh loved. His doctrine was a
doctrine of poverty, of chastity, of obedience, of suffering, of leav-
ing all things to believe on Him. He acknowledged Himself that
it was a hard truth, the truth He came to impart. His unfolding
of His tenets was lucid and plenary. We ask, was He a successful
teacher? Was His school a failure? Ask of the centuries, ask of
His disciples here, there, everywhere. In that shining example must
be found a way to approximate to the perfection and success which
were His.

On inspection many traits will be made visible which, if repro-
duced in others, may bring them nearer to Him. His character was
an unblemished one. He had His calumniators, but they themselves
knew, and the others knew, that they were traducers. His epitaph
was that He went around doing good. He was the manliest of men.
He was meek and humble, but He never sacrificed principle, never
abandoned His mission. When indignation and unmasking and call-
ing men by their proper names was called for, He never hesitated.
How thoroughly He possessed the courage of His convictions. How
carefully and triumphantly He defended His own reputation when
He thought vindication was worth while or the dignity of the situation
demanded it ! What was there admirable in man that was not more
admirable in Him ? Emphatically, if character goes to the making of
tlie perfect teacher, it worked energetically and faultlessly in Him.
Personality has not a little to do with success in the master. What
about His personality? What was His personality but" the fragrance
of His character. He won all who came to Him. He drew unto
Himself those who had only heard of Him. Character was the

224 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

potent agency. Character is compacted of will and heart and mind.
The will of Christ, how unerring and how strong it was! Hearts
to be what they should be must beat high and strong. How throb-
bing with fortitude His was ! How vigorous its pulsations ! There
was only one sentiment awake in it, tTie sentiment of love. It hated,
too, but love was the all-absorbing feeling. He hated not men, but
what men did, hated it because it hurt men themselves and hurt His
love for men and hurt tlie interests of the Father about whose busi-
ness He had always to be. His own business was teaching the
Father to men.

The whole world has granted that Christ is as a human being
solitary, on a peak, in the heights of the world. Why do they not
make the little stride of will that would bring them on their knees
at His feet in worship of His divinity. Genius, not the pseudo-
genius that poses and repels, but genius, the full flower of intel-
lectuality, diffused its fragrance as He taught. He taught well,
because He knew well. He taught well because He spent so many
nights on the mountain in prayer. His character made His life
beautiful, made His death a triumph. From Him has come the
mandate to all those whom He gave gifts for that purpose to go and
teach.

*'Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." All teachers
are not priests, are not ecclesiastics. Many lay men and lay women
have been very helpful and very efficient catechists and have ranked
high in their work. All, however, will admit, the priests and the
laity, that in no one are more deeply marked the characteristics of
tlie perfect teacher. This does not mean that He is the only teacher,
for He has given others the command to teach, but it does mean
that He is the model to whom all teachers should conform. He

THE PERFECT TEACHER 225

succeeded because He knew, He succeeded because He prayed, He
succeeded because He knew not only what He taught, but knew how
to communicate it to others. He knew Himself and He knew His
disciples. He succeeded because He loved His work and His
Father and those among whom He was sent to work. He who com-
bines these features in himself resembles very closely the Preceptor
of all. It is not enough to have this or that feature, it is necessary
to have all.

Prayer is much, but prayer alone is not everything. Prayer and
work, when they travel hand in hand, effect not a little, but prayer
and work and knowledge are the materials which experience will
manufacture into the perfect teacher. In catechetics this advantage
avails. It is that only the truth is presented and theories count
for nothing. There is no theorizing, no discussion. In other mat-
ters it is otherwise. In philosophy, in theology and even in science
there is room for much diversity of opinion, and, hence, for cavil
and heated opposition.

To be a perfect teacher is to wear a crown. The perfect teacher
molds minds and tutors hearts while he wins them. He fashions
character. He survives in the gracious and splendid memories he
leaves behind; he survives in the men and women he has helped
educate. Nor must it be forgotten that the smile of heaven is
always shining down upon him. His is a life which it is good to
have lived. It is the highest life because it deals with the highest
interests of every life. It is a career which ought to fire those who
walk in it with an unquenchable ambition to be best therein. The
temptation to be guarded against is discouragement. Let him fight
that down and depression will be swallowed up in love for his work.
This love is victorious. Where we love we do not labor, or if we do
labor the labor is loved.

226 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

XX. THE PERFECT SCHOOL

The "little red schoolhouse" has played a conspicuous role in the
history of the United States. It has pointed a moral and adorned
many a tale. It has furnished many a "purple patch" to oratorical
efforts otherwise tame and bald. Its memory will live in the annals
of the country, and many a village haranguer will wax eloquent as
the vision of it floats before his excited imagination. Its survival,
in this fashion, is not an unmixed evil. It will fasten inextricably
upon the national chronicles the recollection of an injustice as
colossal as it was and still Is criminal. The injustice is one that
drove the religionists against whom it was plotted into an attitude
of fidelity, courage and generous self-sacrifice, which will be re-
membered with wondering admiration when the schoolhouse of the
past will be only a memory, and for so many a searing memory.

The archdiocesan centenary in New York, which was such a splen-
did act of faith and such a magnificent tribute to a maligned and
persecuted religion, even from the descendants of those who perse-
cuted it, had no greater subject upon which to pour out floods of
enthusiastic praise than the parochial school in its rise and struggles,
its progress and victories, all making for a consummation which
challenges the admiration of this and all other countries, a consumma-
tion which as much as any other and more than many others con-
tributed to the splendor of that mammoth, stupendous, epochal, his-
torical commemoration of which the glories, no matter how far into
the future they may trail, will still be alight. The parochial school
stands as the champion of faith and justice, stands monumentally as

THE PERFECT SCHOOL 227

an undying witness to the love of Mother Church for the souls of her
children, to her determination that there will be no education ap-
proved by her, save that which is directed and imparted under the
influences of a Christian pedagogy. All this does the parochial
school fight for, though twice has she to provide the sinews of that
warfare, for herself and for the very enemy against whom she
has been forced to enter the lists.

The little red schoolhouse, the forerunner of the public school of
to-day, has done its work just as its offspring has done and is doing
its work. The work it projected it has not done. It boasts that it
is the cradle in which all the progress of this country has been
rocked, that it has nursed all the civilization which has placed her
in the front rank of the peoples of the earth.

It has done all the good that teaching without religion can do. It
has not prevented all, if any, of the evil of which irreligious educa-
tion is inevitably the source.

The history of the United States has yet to be written, and only
when the last page is finished can an impartial verdict be given.
Two disciplines will be brought before the bar of posterity, the
discipline that inculcates religion, the discipline that discards re-
ligion. It is not hard to predict what the decision of the jury will be.

The perfect school is rarer, much rarer, than its description. In
perfection there are many elements of which the Christian school
possesses one which is chief because it is essential. The word of
Christ said, "Go and teach, baptizing all nations in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Teaching is much,
but there is more, there is the baptizing those to whom the teaching
is brought. Teaching itself must descend into the vivifying waters,
teaching itself must be baptized. The school that does not teach in
the name of the Three Persons of the blessed Trinity is not faithful

228 CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY

to the mandate, is doomed -to failure, to moral failure first, to intel-
lectual failure finally. Material progress is only the body of progress.
Without the soul it is speeding rapidly toward death and corrup-
tion. The parochial school has one constituent of perfection, be-
cause the parochial school is built for the purpose of keeping alive
that soul without which there looms up in sight nothing but the
grim specter of dissolution. If religious training is primarily to be
effected, it does not stand in the way of intellectual instruction.
Remissness regarding mental advancement would be neglect of a
very momentous duty. This duty is imperious in its claim to high-
est mentality, that is, to the mentality which is according to the grade
its standard imposes upon it. As it was intended in the second part
of these writings to apply the well-known principles of Christian
pedagogy to catechetics, and because Catechism is the central func-
tion of the parochial school, these concluding remarks are addressed
to that particular school. Christian doctrine does not end with the
days spent in parish schools. Christian doctrine receives all the
development of which it is susceptible in the houses of collegiate and
university education. In Catholic colleges there are classes of ad-
vanced Catechism and of evidences of religion. In these superior
establishments the crowning touch is the course of metaphysics and
etliics without which all higher training is truncated and rendered
lamentably inefiicient. What is to be thought of the philosophy
discussed in colleges and universities which are not guided by the
pedagogical maxims put forward in these pages, can not be put in
any other form of expression unless that of pity and execration.
The parochial school, then, is fast verging toward that perfection
which is within the reach of human effort, when religious training
and secular knowledge march hand in hand and straightwise and
upward. The school is made up In its totality of the kind and degree

THE PERFECT SCHOOL 229

of education, of the skill of the teacher and of the docility of the
children. Where these three are in perfect action and harmonized
combination, there is the perfect school.

Is it necessary to speak of the material school itself? of the
building in which are the rooms wherein teacher and pupils
meet, the one to give, the others to receive? Externals may be
secondary, but in their secondariness they contribute much to
efficiency and so to perfection. "Perfection," said an eminent
actor, "is made of trifles, but perfection is no trifle." The teacher
who is heedless of little things in so far recedes from the
standard, and because this is so, there is nothing little, nothing
trifling in education. It is tliis that renders it a labor so arduous.
It would seerfi, then, that the entire edifice could be an imposing
structure, with an interior providing light and cheerfulness and
comfort and safety, and thereby help toward the idealization of the
teacher and the taught, and so would spring up the perfect school.
It were to be wished that the Christian school could capture the
clinging affection which is so obvious where other schools are con-
cerned. The perfection of the school, of the formal school, is the
advance and the elevation of catechetics, and catechetics is the
purveyor of all those truths which are the saving salt of intellectu-
ality, of all those doctrines which purify and strengthen a people.

Give a free rein, in firm, sure hands, to catechetics and it will be
well with the world. The future that Macaulay predicted for Lon-
don will never come for our metropolis. Emphatically no. The day
will never come when a Moro from the Philippines will sit on a
broken arch of Brooklyn Bridge and sketch the ruins of Trinity
Church.

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PUBLISHED BY JOSEPH F. WAGNER

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The only up-to-date work on the Roman Court. Revised
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History and Devslopment of the
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Present Constitution of the Papal
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Consistory, Congregations, Com-
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The Procedures at the Varioaa

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Appeals to the Curia.

Summary Procedure at Episcopal
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